


No Son of Mine

by Write_like_an_American



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Guardians of the Galaxy - All Media Types, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (in later chapters), Adopted Children, Branding, Child Abuse, Dadding is a learning curve, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family, Family Feels, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Rape/Non-con Elements, Rated For Violence, Slavery, Slow Burn, Some Stakardu (if you squint at later chapters), Team as Family, Will not be canon-compliant with GOTG 2, Yondu Whump, peter whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-08
Updated: 2017-07-02
Packaged: 2018-11-11 08:28:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 24
Words: 42,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11144670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Write_like_an_American/pseuds/Write_like_an_American
Summary: Yondu Udonta is many things, but a good father ain't one of them - despite his best efforts.In which making the shift from 'heavily abused Kree slave' to 'captain' to 'father' is a long and painful journey, for everyone involved.





	1. In which Yondu scares a Terran

**Author's Note:**

> **New fic!!! New fic!!!!!!!**
> 
>  
> 
> **...Okay, now the excitement's out the way, get your tissues ready. I promised Yondu whump and I'm going to deliver. But Peter does suffer a bit first. If child abuse of the 'abuser didn't realize how shitty they were being because they had far worse things done to them and never complained' type isn't your thing, I would suggest that you either stop reading or skip ahead to approximately chapter 5, once it's uploaded. x**
> 
>  
> 
> ****

Yondu's thought processes can be conveyed through simple flow diagrams. One thing leads to another, leads to another, leads to the next.

This isn't to say he ain't smart. In fact, if there's one lesson he's learned since Stakar slashed his name from the official Ogordian Archives and sent him and his crew out to fend for themselves in the big bad galaxy, it's that oftentimes it's safer to pretend to be a helluva lot dumber than you are. But at the same time, Yondu's a doer, not a thinker. No endless pontification or pouring over the outcome of an action; nosiree. He'd rather just do it, and deal with the shit that hits the fan only once the stinky brown gunk is airborn.

You want money? You steal money.

You want respect? You earn it.

You wanna be captain? You prise that golden flame off your predecessor, by force if you gotta.

For every problem there's a solution, and where Yondu's mind fails to summon one up, his experience always provides. Which is why when Quill refuses to stop crying five whole hours after Yondu yanks him away from his dead carrier, Yondu does what had been done to him a thousand times as a child.

He slaps him.

It ain't a hard blow. Quill's a mite of a thing, small and skinny. His neck scarcely looks sturdier than the wire frame that holds his funky lil' headset together. It's hard to imagine that he's of divine heritage. If Yondu whacked him about at full strength, he'd crack the snivelly critter's cranium and do Ego's job for him. So when his palm is introduced to Quill's cheek, it’s with a snap that echoes louder than it stings.

Yondu's left bemused when, rather than freezing, cowering, and most importantly shutting up, Quill blinks twice, shell-shocked, and starts to bawl louder.

“Aw hell...”

He hits him back in the opposite direction. Still no dice. He picks him up by the throat – _gently, gently_ ; _can't break him_ – and gives him a shake.

The sobs only increase, until the tremors make Quill's tiny body quake with their force. He's craning as far from Yondu as he can get, lil' legs running on air and delivering kick after futile kick to his stomach. His headphones slip over his forehead and dangle by the wire that links to the strange Terran contraption at his belt. Yondu dispassionately observes his flailing attempts to retrieve it. He takes in his snotty nose, the spit and tears that glaze his chubby cheeks.

Seems this route ain't gonna be effective. Time to change tactics.

He drops him. Quill hits the floor hard enough to wind, headset clattering besides him. It's a momentary reprieve. Next second the crying returns: all shaky sucks of air and reedy wails. The kid scrambles away from Yondu, belly-up and wide-eyed, dragging his earphones along the greasy floor. When Yondu makes to follow, he flings up his arms, quivering like a bunny.

Yondu stops.

Frowns.

Crouches, so he and the kid are on the same level, head tipping to a new angle as if that'll help him understand why the spill of saltwater from the Terran's tearducts has yet to cease. “What'chu so damn upset about, boy?”

Quill's face scrunches from the nose; his features seem drawn in towards that pointy centerpoint, as if they too are trying to make themselves small. “You hit me!”

“'Cause you was bein' noisy. I'll do it again if ya keep it up.”

“B-but I can't help it!” Quill gestures to his blotchy, freckled face with his blotchy, freckled fists. “I-I-I just... My momma...”

Yondu waits patiently for the sputtering to get out the way of the words. Then, when that doesn't happen, he sighs and makes to stand again – only to abort when the kid gasps and throws himself rearwards, so hard he damn near slams headfirst into the wall and knocks himself unconscious.

Something tells Yondu that saving the brat from Ego only to render him a vegetable wouldn't apply any balm to his conscience – which is, despite his best efforts to booze and whore it into oblivion, still spitting the name of every child he sent to their death in an endless guilty mantra. He sits back down.

“Okay, okay. I'm stayin' right here. But you gonna tell me whas' got ya so upset.” Violence hasn't gotten him what he wants, so he tries for a smile instead – big and toothy, one of his best.

The kid pulls a face. Well, Yondu'd like to see _him_ coax the Ravager bureaucracy into putting together a dental plan – much less convince Stakar to extend it to his banished legion. He draws himself up, puffing out his chest and planting his thumb in the middle of it.

“You tell me what's wrong right now, boy. M'captain of this ship, you hear? Which means if you gotta problem, you come to me. Then I can sort it out, yeah?”

“What, by hitting me a-again?”

Yondu rolls his eyes. God, the kid's like an M-ship radio stuck on repeat. “Count yerself lucky thas all I did.”

Any color brought to Quill's face by the crying rapidly leaches out again. “You're gonna probe me! I knew it!”

Yondu blinks. “What?” Then scowls. “No. _What_? The hell you been fillin' yer fool head with, Terran?”

“That's what aliens do!” Quill glares at him, mutinous and terrified, a ball of vibrating pink emotion. “They abduct people, then they probe 'em! Everyone knows that!”

“Probe – kid.” Yondu shakes his head. “Yer way too young for that kinda talk. Look, only reason yer here's cause my boys wanted a snack.” A cover story he perfected in the mirror that morning. Quill will be safer – everyone will be safer – if his heritage stays on the DL. “I told 'em we weren't gonna cook you cause yer so small and skinny. Good for wigglin' in and out of places for thievin'. But it's too far from Terra to waste fuel droppin' ya back – so I guess that makes you one of us.”

Quill doesn't look enthusiastic about this. The sluice of tears doubles in magnitude. “Y-you m-m-m-mean, I'm I'm never, I'm n-never going home?”

Yondu rolls his eyes. “No shit. Okay kid, rules. You do what I say, when I say. Hell, you do what anyone on this ship with a flame patch tells ya to...” He pauses. Reconsiders. “Unless they try to probe ya. Then you come find me, and I kill 'em.”

Yondu considers himself a shining example of an ex-slave. That doesn't mean he wishes the crap he suffered on anyone else – least of all this blubbery, big-eyed kid, who quails on the floor of the storage cupboard he's been held captive in while they sort out his anti-virus injections, translator chip ugrades (thing's only calibrated for Xandarian and Kree so far, which'll let Quill understand an approximate quarter of the crew, Yondu included) and his basic biomed status, so they can feed him at mess without having him break out in hives.

Quill would never have survived, had his and Yondu's situations been reversed. He's too delicate. Raised too soft, too weak – whereas Yondu's parents made sure he knew what he was worth from the moment he was born. If Yondu treats him as he's been treated, Quill won't harden under the pressure. He'll just break. And that ain't fun for nobody.

Yondu's gotta toughen him up somehow. He's gotta protect this kid, whose fate has been laid out by heritage – and if that means he's gotta hurt him a lil' along the way, so be it. It'll be a fine line between pressing too hard and pushing too little. But that's a line Yondu struts along every day when dealing with his crew. Adding one more name to his list of able-bodied starmen can't be that difficult.

So he thinks.

Perhaps Yondu is as dumb as he pretends after all.

 


	2. In which Peter yells

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Kragdu isn't the focus of this fic, but it does contain it, in a lateral sort of way - as seen in this chapter!**

“I hate you!”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah!”

“Well what'chu gonna do about it, boy? Ain't no use makin' threats that you ain't ever gonna live up to -”

“What, like when you threaten to eat me?”

Silence crashes onto the Bridge like a meteor strike.

Yondu breathes in. Yondu breathes out. Yondu stomps over to where Quill, Ravager reds stiff despite having been worn day and night for a year, has been practising on a decoupled navigation-rig. The boy's eyes dart for the exit, although he doesn’t follow them.

Honestly. Here's Yondu, fulfilling his captainly duties, making sure the brat can survive in a galaxy populated mostly by folks who wanna eat him, and a few who wanna do worse. And what does he get in return? Peace? No. Gratitude? Pssh. He wishes. _Respect_ is far too much to ask for.

“You,” he seethes, finding the nearest pink ear and twisting, “have gotta learn, my boy, that I ain’t to be fucked with.”

Had he been back on Stakar's ship, in the days before his money-grubbing younger self decided he wanted to wear a flame on his chest rather than his sleeve and had started sourcing jobs behind the captain's back; some idjit would have muttered 'big words for a Kree slave'.

Some idjit would've also finished that day with a new hole. It would be cauterized just enough to make death slow, punched through their gut-sack with a whistle while Stakar looked on with pride.

But by now, Yondu's more than proved himself capable of introducing backtalkers to his arrow. He’s gone above and beyond the demands of duty, in fact - as attested by the corpse of the last first mate. Or rather, the select pieces of his corpse that are still recognizable, after Yondu grimly grabbed him by the shoulderplates and lowered him boot-first into one of the shrieking, overheating industrial grade ventilation fans by the fusion core, which most engineers lost a finger or two to over the course of their lives.

Yondu had had those pieces preserved and wall-mounted special. Let that be a lesson to any Ravager who ferries slaves.

There's an irony in that, because he’d done his fair share of trafficking too, before Stakar got wise to him. Yondu supposes he ought to be lucky he hadn't gotten the fan-treatment. But that had been different. He hadn’t _known_ what was happening to them kids - at least, he'd never admitted it to himself. And sure, he oughta have split the moment he smelled fish, when Ego buzzed onto his contact screen and answered Yondu's casual enquiry after the last brat's whereabouts (not because he _cared,_ just outta curiosity) with some guff about them being _outside to play_.

...And the second. And the third. Guy wasn't the most inventive when it came to excuses. But Yondu had swallowed the lot, until his gullet couldn't hold any more lies, because that was better than confronting what he'd enabled as he ferried child after child, trusting little face after trusting little face, into the arms of a monster.

The galaxy’s a cruel place. His first twenty years stand testament to that. If he hadn't fetched the lil’ blighters, some meaner sod would've. Then they'd have spent the last fortnight of their lives snivelling in cages rather than fulfilling every planet-bound brat's dream, and being given free rein of a pirate ship. As the outcome would be the same regardless, ain’t no point blaming himself. Right?

Unfortunately, unlike most of the falsehoods he feeds his crew, this one refuses to acquire that veneer of truth which accompanies everything he says, so long as he bawls it at top volume and with just a hint of a whistle.

Anyway. Back to that mutineering mate.

Kid he's promoted in his place doesn’t look like much. Scrawny Hraxian who Yondu selected from the rabble because his high-rise stature gives him the graceless goofiness of a baby giraffe. Resolutely _not_ captain material.

He seems enthusiastic though, so Yondu lets him amuse himself strutting about the ship like the title means more than a target on his back. He even offers the lad the occasional drink from his personal stash. Not enough to imply interest, just to whet his still-developing appetites and feed the ugly flush that shines through his beard when he and Yondu strip down together after battles, in the poky private shower room between their cabins.

So long as the kid - Yondu ain’t yet bothered to learn his name - keeps his interests stoked, he’ll stay loyal. And so, Yondu will exploit that crush for all it’s worth.

His new mate and his new crew – and it still feels odd to say _his_ rather than _Stakar’s_ – know better than to sound their laughter where it ain't welcome. Oh, he doesn't doubt there's snakes in the grass. Upon his exodus from the Armada, he had been followed only by the worst of the worst – the scrapings from the Ravager’s stinking, pitch-proofed barrel. Men who fuck and kill and gamble without a care for the collateral. Men who don't turn up their noses at smuggling children.

They do turn 'em up at keeping them around though. Yondu's already escorted several to the airlocks who took issue with his offer of hospitality to the Terran. Some days, like today, he's tempted to usher the Terran out after them.

Quill contorts to the shape of his ear. “Owowow...”

But while his mouth's making all the right motions – flapping around a thousand “I'm sorries” of rising volume, promising he won't sass him ever again, calling him “captain” - Yondu knows he doesn't mean a word. In fact, only one of Quill’s sentences sounded like it was genuine.

_I hate you._

Quill really is a child. He doesn't get it. He doesn't understand what Yondu's saved him from. And Yondu can never, ever tell him – because Quill being Quill, and Quill being a stupid little _brat_ who tries to get him to list his official alias as _Star-Lord,_  would only try to fix the whole damn galaxy and get himself killed into the bargain.

Contrarily, Yondu has survived long enough to know that there's no mending some things. Some evils are too widespread, too insidious, too deeply rooted. The Andromeda star-clusters are maggoty pits of disease and cruelty – not even cruelty of the sadistic kind, just that of the apathetic.

No one gives a shit about the poxy kids on Knowhere, or the kids left homeless and starving by the ongoing Kree-Xandarian war. They certainly don't care about kids who're sold by their parents on poverty-stricken planets new to the galactic alliance: kids from rare species who make exotic pets, or livestock, or battle slaves. Yondu's willing to bet that in the wider scheme of things, very few tears would be shed over Quill's dead siblings either.

More fool him for not being able to forget them.

Yondu pinches his ear until Quill's pleas take a turn for the snivelling. Then he releases him with a scoff, stepping to the plinth's far side so he can boot the kill switch.

Quill blocks constellations with the hunch of his shoulders. The holographic star-graph freezes. Without motion, it looks still and barren in comparison to the whirling maps that are pinched and expanded and tossed from side to side like glittering pizza-dough by the navs to his left and right. It's a sketch on a flat surface, rather than an interactive version of the universe in miniature.

Yondu watches the display depower. The stars dim in a uniform sweep, fading until they can no longer be discerned from the general low ambience. Once they've dwindled to nothing, Yondu turns his back and starts for the doors. Quill blinks away tears, ear as resplendently red as his face.

“The hell was that for?” he hisses. His confidence is restored with every step Yondu takes away from him. Yondu shrugs.

“Ya make the best faces, is all. C'mon now kid. Time you earned yer keep.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Short chapters because I'm a slut for comments and kudos! But you'll get at least one a day. x**


	3. In which Quill goes on a mission

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Shameless _Hitchhiker's Guide_ references**

It’s called a Stavloxian canon, and they’re gonna steal it. Or rather, Peter is.

“You gotta be kidding me.”

Yondu points to his smirk. “This look like the face of a kidding man?”

Quill, examining the specs for the Stavlox fortress they’re due to arrive at in T-minus forty, decides it’s in his best interests not to answer. The pad projects the base’s blueprints over the m-ship console, a tactile diagram that can be rolled, turned, and exploded according to the inexpert twists of Quill’s gloved hand. It’s a glistening bauble, tethered to the holopad by a stream of photons which whirl fast as dust in a tornado. Yondu nods at a cluster of pipes on what is currently the station’s underside.

“Thas yer in.”

“You want me to crawl through them?” Peter spins the map so the pipes are at eye-level, and fumbles up the scale gauge. His gape almost dislocates his jaw. “They’re tiny!”

“So are you. Now, you bang your chest and do what yer told, son. Like any other Ravager.”

Peter stiffens. “Don’t call me that.”

“What, a Ravager?” If Xandarian brats shock their mommies by saying they want to be space pirates when they grow up, do juvenile space pirates tell their captains they want to be Nova Corpsmen?

But Peter doesn’t start babbling about pinning a star to his lapel and swearing loyalty to the Prime. He hunches on his high-boosted copilot’s seat. His pink face is dappled by freckles and the reflections from the hangar lights, which glance off the toys that are glued along Yondu’s dashboard and strung from the curved cockpit glass above.

“Don’t call me ‘son’,” he mutters, to the clenched fists in his lap. “I ain’t.”

Yondu guffaws until his gut aches.

“Well obviously,” he says, still sniggering, “You ain’t nearly so blue. Or so pretty.”

Peter scoffs. Yondu feigns offence that the kid thinks he’s anything less than a Celestial’s Great Gift to the Galaxy, and makes a mental note to call Quill ‘son’ at every given opportunity. By the time he pins the spacemask behind Quill’s ear and boots him out the airlock with an order not to get himself dead, he’s still chuckling.

Him, a father? Fuck, that’s like calling Vogon slam poetry nights a good first date.

 

* * *

 

Quill doesn't die. At least he can obey some orders. It comes mighty close though.

His beacon goes off far too soon. The alarm bells match those in Yondu's head. The kid couldn't have located the power core in that time, let alone slipped it from its casing and snuck back the way he came. It's impossible. But there's ships regurgitating from the station's flank, swirling out in all directions like bees from a hive. As tempting as it is to practise some tough-love and tell Quill he ain't coming in until he's earned his bread and butter, Yondu knows that if he does that he might as well have handed him over to Ego.

Quill ain't nearly as grateful as he ought to be, but that's hardly new. As Yondu hauls him through the airlock, the kid kicks and swings and hollers like he's an enemy too. It takes him several long breaths to calm down – and three slaps, delivered by Yondu with stinging precision to each side of his face the moment the mask peels back and reveals tears.

“Cryin'? The hell? What are you – a child?”

“Yes,” Peter yells. His big wet eyes narrow, and he balls his little fists in the front of the captain's coat when Yondu makes to smack him again. He's breathing so fast Yondu can see his ribcage fluttering under the thick, oversized leather of his jacket: a little bony imprint that swells and recedes in time with his heaving shoulders. “I'm nine years old, Yondu. _Nine._ And they nearly got me, okay?”

Their course is already charted. They're headed for the galleon – back home, not that Quill's ever called it that. Canon fire thuds their shields, the impacts rocking the entire _Warbird_ up on its side, hullplates creaking at the yaw. Yondu rides out the judders, as Quill bowls about the floor in his determination not to cling to his captain's legs. He squints at the bundle of oversized red leathers and messy hair, expecting further explanation. When none appears to be forthcoming, he heaves the boy up when he rolls by and delivers his last assault through a flick to the nose and a pinch of one despicably damp pink Terran cheek.

“Mission failed,” he snarls, shoving Quill into the wall. “Do better next time, or there won't be a third.”

The sound of Quill's wheezy, panicked breaths fades as he stomps to the cockpit.

Nine? So fuckin' what? What's age got to do with anything? Doesn't the kid realize how lenient he's being? Why, if Yondu was his old masters, he'd grab the kid right now, hustle him to his room and -

Yondu stops. The ladder rung digs through his bootsole, but the meat of his foot is callused from spending so many years without owning so much as a shoe, and he doesn’t notice.

Big hands, strong hands, a shade darker than his own, gather a five-year-old's trembling wrists together. _I'll give you something to cry about, you stupid little savage._

There's a raised whip. A crack. A scream.

No.

Yondu ain't them. He ain't never gonna become them. He's giving this brat the goddam VIP treatment, treating him as well as he does; firstly because he's crew and secondly because he owes it to the memory of Quill's dead siblings. If the kid can't see that, it's his own fool fault.

Perhaps deep down (very deep down, under the slow-accumulating scrimshaw-scratches of grudges and brig-stints and endless disciplinary scrub shifts) Quill knows. Because despite all claims to hate him, once the kid gets his wheezing under control, he follows.

His feet slap and slide inside boots several sizes too large, stuffed with spare socks and laced extra-tight to keep them from falling off mid-sprint. That was a good call on the tailor's behalf. Judging by the singes on his coat, Quill's done a lot of running lately.

Yondu glances over as that scruffy ginger head pokes from the ladder shaft. Quill's like a lil' burrowing critter venturing out of its hole, scoping its surroundings for danger. He only finds Yondu – but that's scary enough. He shrinks away, quivering in the shadows until Yondu takes his seat.

Yondu does so. Boy's gonna need a haircut soon, though he'll have to steal his walkman and sit on him to get him to comply. He diverts controls to manual and steers them out of the way of a particularly violent volley of plasma-fire, before he lets himself talk. “The hell happened out there?”

“Your stupid pipes were too small!” Peter's sweated inside his mask; his fringe clings to his face like orange-brown noodles, and his hands are shaking as he scrambles up the last three rungs, hurling himself onto the seat besides Yondu and strapping himself in with brisk and furious clicks. He'd left his Walkman on the dashboard. The wires have been wound reverently around it, forming a neatly crisscrossed ball. It's been wedged between a shiny bauble, stuck to the console with a sucky-pad, and a broken compass dial, and Quill runs his fingertips over it as if he's reassuring himself it's still there. Then he snatches it to cradle on his lap, eyes widening in synchrony with the approaching green bolt. “Watch out, watch out, watch out -”

Yondu dodges the necroblast, yawning. “Nah. I got yer measures from the tailor. You'd've fit. Just had t'hold yer breath.”

“But they were _tight_ and _dark_ and -”

Oh, that doesn't bode well. Almost as poorly as the pleeping, red-flashing holograms that pop up over his viewscreen, informing him they have missiles locked on.

Yondu waves the warning away. He pushes his joystick forwards until the gyrosphere creaks. Their belts cradle them, digging into their chests as the grav-generators drag them away from the seats. But it ain't the missiles he's glaring at. “Yer telling me that'cha came back without completin' the mission objective cause you was _scared?_ ”

Quill's jaw wags in silence. Then snaps shut, as Yondu twists them into a spiral, the light from their wing-mounted engines forming a golden double helix that dazzles the ships on their tail. They level out on the flat, two of the missiles imploding on impact with one another and the third lost to the asteroid belt. Yondu swallows down the familiar roil of his breakfast – never was one for fancy flips in-flight. He checks that the kid ain't messed his upholstery.

Quill, hands trembling but no worse for wear, lowers his headphones over his ears. The scorch mark on his coat sleeve smokes, the smell of burning leather wafting between them as Quill glowers through his reflection at the plasma-blast studded blackness of space, and sets his music to _Ooga-Chaka._

Great. Now he's sulking. Does Terran-puberty hit early, or something? Yondu wasn't expecting to have to deal with this moody nonsense until Peter was thirteen, _at least._

“Y'know kid,” he begins, through gritted teeth so jagged and snaggly that they barely fit together when he closes his mouth, “I done a lot for ya, over these past months. I fed ya, clothed ya, stopped 'em eatin' ya -”

Despite the rhythmic chant of his Walkthing, Quill hears him. His response is a smidgeon loud, as if to make up for the beats pumping in his ears. “Hell, cap'n. Would you quit going on about that?”

“-And this is what I get in return? A _coward?_ ”

The word hits Peter harder than any open-palmed smack – Yondu knows, 'cause he's given him several. Quill cringes. Then cringes in the opposite direction, away from the window display as several Stavlox ships rush them in formation. Yondu evades and activates his canons. He misses 'em all by a mile, but spooks them enough to clear a clean run of the jump spot. He'll have to come back and complete this mission some other time – luckily he picked one with a long deadline. He ain't gonna wedge himself through no vent ducts, but then again he doesn't need to. It'll take a lot of whistles, but he's sawn through hullplating before and he'll do it again. Just because this job is salvagable though, it doesn't mean he ain't pissed with the brat.

“If I give you an order, boy, I expect ya to follow it. Fuck fear. Fuck everything but what yer told, you understand that?”

“I'm _nine,_ ” Quill reminds him, raising his voice so he can hear it above the pump of _Moonage Daydream_ in his ears. It doesn't make any more difference to Yondu than the first time he said it. He cuffs the back of Quill's head, scoffs, and dips their nosecone through the jump-hole, the rest of the _Warbird_ sucked along behind.

 

* * *

 

“Slave driver,” Quill accuses when Yondu gives him a week of five-hour scrub shifts.

Yondu laughs and smacks him, because the kid ain't got the first clue what he's talking about.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Kudos = love, comments = undying love, recs = undying love + my firstborn!**


	4. In which Peter learns to shoot

Once the obligatory mopping, buffing, sponging and sweeping duties have been completed to Yondu's satisfaction, he collars Quill and hustles him to the hangar bay, barking for the new kid (Kraggles? Krag-win?) to hold fort.

Quill flinches like he's expecting a sock to the jaw. That’s ridiculous; Yondu never uses his knuckles. Not unless the boy's _really_ pissed him off. He doesn't relax until Yondu steers him into the airlock, which clamps onto the _Warbird’s_ entranceway through a combination of magnets, iron bolts, and rust.

The metal under their boots chimes hollow, funnelling them into the _Warbird's_ central hold. Yondu's left the cockpit hatch open, so the glass shell curves over them like a observatory's skylight. This hangar is a spacedock, a gouge in the _Eclector's_ underside protected only by the flimsy film of the plasma-repulsor field. Through it, Yondu can see the firefly-specks of his combat team as they practice their dogfights, gun-cartridges loaded with duds.

Quill's trepidation drains away. He points overhead to where canons flash and engines blaze, and M-ships swoop, flip, and dive.

“Are we headed up there? Are you gonna let me fly? I promise I won't puke!”

“Nope,” says Yondu shortly. Quill ain't mature enough for that. He's nine, as he likes to remind Yondu when they're arguing over why Peter has to pull his meager weight or be put in the stewpot. Maybe next year.

Quill's pout returns full-force. “Why'm I here then?”

“Cause you an' me are goin' on a roadtrip, son.”

The pout intensifies. “Don't call me that! I've told you not to call me that!”

“Well, I'mma keep doin' it so long as ya keep making fuss.” They tramp through the _Warbird's_ interior. Lamps crank on one after another. They register the pressure of feet and the sound of voices, banishing the darkness ahead and illuminating the semi-precious stones, plastic figurines, baubles and carved statuettes which blanket every flat surface except the floor, their natural reflectivity dulled by their coat of dust.

Quill doesn't look excited. Wuss. He's probably scared this'll be another thieving job for him to fuck up – and that when he does, Yondu'll make him clean his grubby old M-ship. Best way to reassure him is to explain. Yondu ignores the flinch when he drapes an arm across Quill's skinny shoulders. 

“Wee nearby planet. Unpopulated, 'cept for plantlife and non-sentients too slow an' herbivorous to bother us.” He pats the pistol rump, where it rests against his thigh. It's crusty from disuse. All things left without rigorous polishing on a Ravager ship accumulate a greasy rind by the end of the fortnight. But while entropy deadens plasma coils if you leave them too long uncharged, he's only neglected maintenance for a week. It'll have enough charge for what he's got planned. “You, son, are gonna learn to shoot.”

The _don't call me that_ is lost beneath happy squeals. Yondu's oddly glad. “What? Seriously? Yes!”

“This don't,” says Yondu, holding up a finger, “mean that you get one in the field. Not until you've convinced me there ain't gonna be no friendly fire. Or at least, not against no one I won't miss. Understand?”

Quill nods, anticipation unquenchable. The eagerness on his face warms kernels in Yondu's chest cavity – like he's been shot with red-hot flak. He doesn't ruminate over the sensation. Just observes it from a distance, disjointing the feeling from his thoughts in the same way he taught himself to float on a blank plane when he was being punished in the slave pens. If it’s dangerous to let yourself be damaged, it’s definitely dangerous to get attached. He should probably nip this in the bud, but -

“So the only people I ain't allowed to shoot are Kraglin, Doc and myself?”

 _Kraglin._ That's it. Yondu snorts. “What makes ya think I'd miss ya, brat?”

Quill doesn't laugh off the joke. He smiles though, small and rueful. “Don't worry, cap'n. I ain't _that_ stupid.”

Yondu doesn't bother to correct him. He's assigned himself the duty of keeping Quill _safe,_ not happy. And in the endless flow-diagram of his mind, the fewer people who know that Yondu sees Quill as anything other than a potential profit-source – Quill himself included – the safer Quill will be.

 

* * *

 

The trees wobble in and out of focus. Peter sticks his tongue out. He squeezes one eye shut in an effort to hone on what's beyond the wavering pistol barrel, rather than the barrel itself.

A palm introduces itself to the side of his head with a crack that's so familiar he's almost anticipating it. That doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. Peter drops the pistol – just to his side, not all the way; doesn't want to earn another blow. He spins on the smirking captain, clutching his stinging cheek.

“What the hell?”

“Both eyes open. Gotta keep yer wits about ya in a firefight – no point cuttin' off yer field of vision.”

“You could've just _said that..._ ” But his grumbling fades as he lifts the pistol again. To his surprise, one of Yondu's hands comes up to grip his forearm. It's unnerving, to have those blue palms on him when they ain't causing pain. “Um. What?”

The captain's leathers stick against Peter's own. They brush intermittently, their breathing not quite in tandem. He's crouched besides him so their heads are almost on a level, as he glances down Peter's barrel and nudges to correct his aim. “I'll hold ya for the first ones. No sense you snappin' yer jaw before yer used to the kickback – not that it wouldn't be nice to have a reprieve from the yap.”

Peter huffs. He's lets Yondu move him, shifting his arms like a marionette's until they stick straight out in front, braced to lock. This pistol's lightweight. However, after being held at arm's length for three minutes while Yondu made him recite loading procedures and flicked his nose for every wrong answer, the strain has dug claws into his chest. Peter shifts, trying to lessen the ache, and scowls when Yondu steadies him.

“Like you care if I get hurt.”

It's hard to tell when Yondu's raising his eyebrows. Ain't often the cap'n peels away his leathery shell, even to shower. Certainly never in front of crew - or at least no crew but Kraglin, which is kinda weird now Peter thinks about it.

But the rare occasion Peter's seen him with his sleeves rolled up has proven that he's more scar than skin. Whether he doesn't boast much bodyhair as a result, or whether it's just an alien thing, Peter neither cares enough, nor dares enough, to enquire. Right now though, eyebrows or otherwise, the set of Yondu's features indicate that he thinks Peter's barmy.

Who knows? Maybe punches are how his species says hello. And, as he claims daily, he could've been worse. However just because Yondu ain't the _biggest_ a-hole in the galaxy (or the runner up, or even bronze-prize) doesn't mean Peter enjoys being shoved about. At least the bullies on the playground had been kids. Yondu's an adult, a full-grown man.

Peter's sense of justice has yet to be warped by the Ravager lifestyle. He condemns Yondu for picking on someone so much his smaller, especially when that someone's himself.

No time for bemoaning the unfairness of it all. If he thinks he's slacking, Yondu'll only hit him again.

Peter squeezes off a shot. His pistol bucks, Yondu catching the jerk and easing his arms from their curl so they can see the damage.

There's a smoking hole in a tree alright. But it ain't the one Peter was aiming at.

He slumps in preparation for his beating. It comes, although not in the way Peter expects. Yondu's grin is manky and yellow. He pounds a fist between Peter's shoulderblades, congratulatory but still hard enough to knock out air, and pats the thrumming pistol on its barrel, where he's warned Peter to only touch if he wants plasma-burns.

“Nice 'un, son! Yeah, just like that.”

Peter's so confused that he forgets to scold him for the s-word _._ “Seriously? I missed it!”

“Ain't no one who hits their first target, 'cept by lucky fluke. Yer closer than most.” Yondu takes stock of Peter's frown. “What? Ya look like I tried to steal yer Walkthing.”

“Walk _-man.”_ Peter wriggles one hand from under Yondu's, pistol dangling limp in the other, so he can stroke the orange foam pads. “I thought you were gonna hit me.”

“Huh?” Yondu's face spasms through its eyebrow-less shock for the second time in as many minutes. “The hell would I hit ya for doing a good job?”

Technically, that's what his beating of Peter's back had been. Even if it was borne of enthusiasm rather than frustration, he's still gonna have bruises. That's okay. Peter's used to them. What he isn't used to is his crazy, abusive dirtbag of a captain looking at him like _he's_ was the unpredictable one.

“Oh, I dunno. Because you always hurt me? You send me to steal things without a gun, you smack me when I speak back, you put me on scrubs and make me polish portholes for five hours a day -”

“ _Five?_ Five hours ain't nothing! Boy, I work twelve hour shifts an' barely give myself time to piss.”

“Yeah but you're an adult! You asked for this life! I didn't! I'm a kid! Yondu, I'm nine. I'm supposed to be out playing with friends, not... Not burgling alien spaceships! Not nearly dying! Not _working for my keep..._ ”

“Oh don't worry,” comes the breezy response. “You don't earn nearly so much as ya chow down in mess. I oughta put you on eight-hour cycles, same as any other Ravager; let'chu see what a real day's work looks like...”

Peter blanches. “No! No, you can't do that!”

Yondu, of course, finds his horror amusing. He rests his forearms on his knees, casually predatory, and leans so the soft phosphorescence of Peter's plasma cartridge glints off his teeth. “And why not, boyo? Issat you givin' yer cap'n orders?”

“No! Yes! I don't know!” The worst thing is, Peter knows he's powerless. There's nothing he can do, nothing he can say, to stop Yondu working him to an early grave (which is what, to his mind, an eight hour shift amounts to). “You can't treat me like an adult!” he insists, tremble spreading through him in sync with Yondu's growing, treacle-slow smirk. “You can't, Yondu, because _I'm a fucking kid!_ I'm a fucking kid, I'm nine years old, and I want my damn childhood back!”

Once upon a time, mom would've tutted at him for cussing. But mom's not here. Mom's six feet underground on a planet a billion lightyears away, and Peter's gallivanting across the galaxy next door on a pirate ship, with no bedtime and no curfew and no tuts to be found.

By all rights, he should be happy. He'd fantasized about the stars, like any other boy. He'd played make-believe: piloting the Millennium Falcon with Han and Chewie, walking on the moon with Armstrong, and battling Bad Men (you could tell they were evil by their color schemes) alongside the heroes in the comics grandpa bought him from the cornershop after visiting mom at the weekend. So technically, he's gotten everything he wanted (or most things, as wookies aren't real, and he has a sneaking suspicion that the Ravagers are the Andromeda galaxy equivalent of those nameless HYDRA goons, who Captain America used to send flying with one mighty toss of his shield).

Reality is, as ever, grimier than the dream. It's shit in fact. But what's shittiest of all is that mom isn't around to scold him for his language.

There's only Yondu.

 Yondu is ear-flicks and cheek slaps and an infuriating grin (which is slowly seeping from his face as he assesses Peter's crumpling expression). Yondu is the monster who stole him from his home.

Peter had disliked the doctors who ushered him out of the room so they could prod and poke at his mom. He had despised the older kids on the playground who'd smushed innocent frogs for fun. But he'd never _hated_ anyone before. Not until he met Yondu.

This is definitely the worst adventure of Peter's life.

He's near-crying. He blinks the tears stubbornly back, chin wrinkling but refusing to tremble. Yondu doesn't punch him for daring to show sentiment. He just stares at Peter's lowered pistol and the white knuckled fingers around it, forehead puckered like he's trying to figure him out.

Then, quietly, looking up at him with an almost quizzical frown, the captain asks: “This ain't a childhood?”

Peter could turn the blaster on him there and then. Y'know, if he had the guts to kill, and if he was the space pirate Yondu's trying to turn him into, rather than the weepy Terran who keeps disappointing him.

“No,” he seethes, tossing the gun on the dirt by Yondu's boot. “No it isn't.”

Yondu studies the oily gleam of light off the barrel, the rubber dips of the grip.

“Y'know I'm trying,” he says eventually. It's quieter than Peter's ever heard him. The contrast between the big brash noisy Ravager captain and the man knelt before him is disturbing, like he's lurched into a parallel universe. “Y'know that, don't you?”

Peter's fists clench with the urge to pummel. He doesn't dare risk it though.

“ _T_ _ry harder,_ ” he spits.

He's lost his battle with the tears. He stomps back to the _Warbird_ before Yondu can mock them.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **So much stroppiness in this chapter. Tell me thoughts, feelings, etc. Want to hug Peter? Want to hug Yondu? Share all below!**


	5. In which Kraglin gets laid

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CN: some mentions of sex I guess?**

Peter notices a palpable difference in the way Yondu treats him after that. There's still the occasional thwack, still the odd stinging introduction of palm to skull or boot to backside. But they're kept for when Peter does something that is, as Yondu dubs it on his thirteenth birthday, after he's caught Quill trying to sneak an M-ship from the hangar for the fourth time that month, _more stupid than normal, and liable to get you or someone else dead._

Peter tries to argue that that shouldn't matter, since they've established that Yondu gives fewer shits about him than he squeezes out when he's hogging the lone rusty cubicle in their shift's bathroom-block in the mornings. But Yondu just shakes his head and  _sighs_ _,_ like he's dealing with a snivelling eight-year-old all over again, and Peter's so incensed he actually takes a swing at him.

Yondu catches his fist.

Peter freezes. His hand's locked in blue. He tries to tug it loose, but Yondu holds firm. He squeezes, enough to threaten – and Peter nearly whimpers at the thought of bones buckling, carpals and metacarpals pulped by a clench of Yondu's fist.

That's his dominant hand. He's being taught to shoot akimbo, because a pirate never relies on any singular means of self-defence. But he ain't all that great at it yet. What use will the Ravagers have for him, if he can't fire a gun? None, that's what. It'll be to the galley with him, and Yondu'll mutter  _I told you so_ as he tucks into Terran casserole _._

His hand remains unbroken. The odd blank expression, as if he'd reacted on instinct rather than intent, lingers on Yondu's face. Peter holds his breath for its duration, not trusting that he'll come out of this without suffering.

Yondu's fingers creak open slower than an M-ship performing the full Corps-mandated docking procedure. The imprint of each digit is emblazoned on the back of Peter's hand in aching red.

“Don't do that again, son.”

Peter disobeys, of course. But not until he's big enough to catch Yondu's fists too.

 

* * *

 

One day, not two years later, Yondu arrives at Bridge for his first shift and Kraglin ain't there. Neither's his usual steaming morning beverage – made of ground up soldier pills, hot water, a spoonful of sugar (makes the medicine go down, or so Quill claims) and a tipple of something spicy the galley crew insist is best left to his imagination whenever Yondu asks for the recipe.

Huh.

First mate and captain work back-to-back rotas. They only share two hours on active duty per day-cycle – Yondu's first and Kraglin's last. Obfonteri usually swings by before Yondu stumbles back to berth though, officially to make reports while he's relatively bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, unofficially to shepherd Yondu to his cabin if his body's fallen asleep ahead of his brain, and he's having trouble placing one foot in front of the other.

Somehow, over the years, Yondu has internalized the routine of arriving on deck, grabbing a mug that smells of caffeine-headaches and doesn't taste much better, and getting on with his day. He'd always assumed Kraglin made one of the rookies brew it. But no – here's the proof.

No first mate. No drink.

Only Quill, aged fifteen, back from his first successful solo and near-delirious what with how much blood has rushed to his head. Yondu's surprised he fits through the door.

“Brat!” he booms, knuckling Quill's temple in greeting. Boy'd done good. He admits it, even to himself, although he keeps that dangerous bubble of pride tethered low in his guts where it belongs. “You seen Obfonteri?”

Quill struggles out of the noogie. Not even Yondu's presence can dampen his high spirits. “No. Figured you and him were doing something.”

His eyebrow-waggle leaves very little room for interpretation regarding what he thinks that 'something' is. Yondu deploys a smack – rare nowadays, but no less successful at souring Quill's mood.

“Yeah, okay. I take it back. Who'd wanna screw _you?_ ”

“Says the boy who took an A'askavarian for a testdrive...”

“For the last time! That was a distraction! We didn't get further than first base!”

“Thas' dangerous enough, when it's A'askavarians yer canoodlin'. Now Quill – if ya ain't being useful, you can run along to the galley and fetch me my goddam drink.”

Quill grumbles and grouses and does as he's told. He forgets the sugar and he doesn't steep the pills nearly enough. The result tastes impossibly worse diluted, although Yondu soldiers through to the bitter end.

That's the only reason Yondu saunters by the M-ship hangar on his lunchbreak. If Kraglin's deserted and left him to suffer Quill's negligible coffee-making skills, Yondu resolves to hunt him down and force him to drink a gallon of the stuff in penance. Luckily, there's no need. At Yondu's midday, Kraglin is supposed to be halfway through an REM-cycle. And, as indicated by the vessel in his dock, one space down from Yondu's own battered, ding-pocked _Warbird,_ he is.

Yondu decides it's pointless to get worked up over his absence. The lad has enough hours in hand to justify the occasional day of unauthorized leave. He'll be back soon enough.

And as predicted, he is. Kraglin shows his face that afternoon, when Yondu's self-allotted dinner hour bisects Kraglin's breakfast.

That face is, Yondu can't help but notice, glowing. Not to mention topped with a rumpled thicket of hair. For once, he's got his collar zipped all the way to his chin. However, there's this one little hickey under his earlobe, more a love-peck than a bite, which he's relying on the dodgy lighting and his messy tattoos to camoflage.

They ain't doing a good job.

Kraglin plonks his bony ass besides Yondu's, and his mug besides his bowl, as is custom. His thigh is nudged by a knee that's almost as sharp as the blades Kraglin stows under sleeves and down boots, and has the tailor stitch into the lining of his collar. When Yondu barges back his mate hastily relocates it, mumbling “s'rry sir” into his coffee.

Kraglin's scrawny and grungey as ever. But he ain't nowhere near as useless as Yondu first assumed. That's both a pleasant surprise and an irritation – because yeah, Kraglin will barter for any trinket his cap'n sets his eye on and deliver it with a blush, a stammer, and a heartily whittled pricetag. But _competence_ means _potential as a competitor._ It's rare for them to go three fortnights without Yondu having to march some sod to the airlocks who can't keep his mouth shut about how Stakar's only placed his embargo on the name _Udonta_ , and that perhaps if cap'n did what was best for his crew and renounced his title, their faction could start collecting debts again rather than paying 'em.

Tensions vacillate between _high_ and _alpine._ But if there's one thing Yondu is certain of, it's that Kraglin wouldn't mutiny. Not of his own accord. Poor idiot's too besotted for that. It'd be impossible _not_ to notice how big his pupils blow when he watches Yondu whistle, and Yondu's sure there's more than one betting pool among the crew, dedicated to how long it'll be before Cap'n pops young Kraggles's cherry.

Judging by the ditzy grin, that cherry has been well and truly squelched.

Of course, Yondu doubts he ever knew Kraglin as a virgin. Bot-hookers are a rite of passage among their kind, and while Kraglin's got a face that rivals his own for its ability to project sour misanthropy when hungover, Yondu can't deny that he's got a purty set of peepers. Kid can pull, alright. It's just that he very rarely _does,_ especially not when there's a cap'n to moon over _._

Consequentially, this situation smacks of trouble.

Yondu steals a swig from Kraglin's cup. He scrunches his nose at the granulated, syrupy texture. Kraglin's got a sweet tooth that rivals Quill's _._ He doesn't take a spoonful of sugar so much as a mug-full _._ His mate seems to have forgotten the drink, more content to slide sated in his chair and direct his dopey smile at the rust-dripping fans, inset into the ceiling high above. Yondu clonks their elbows together, pulling his attention back to the present.

“Who was she?”

“He,” Kraglin corrects dreamily. Then his eyes bug and he gulps, like he's spilled some big secret.

Cute.

Yondu makes like he's surprised, then intrigued, then _interested_ , and flashes a hint of silver tooth. It's so easy to make that flush creep under Kraglin's stubble that he almost enjoys the lack of a challenge. “Who was _he,_ then.”

“Kid we picked up last port. Um.” When zipped, Kraglin's collar is so tight that he can't swallow properly. The gangly knobble in his throat bounces helplessly under the fabric, and he tugs at it like it's a noose. “Name's Azrik, or something. He's real sweet. And, uh. B-blue.”

Is this the same guy who got their girl a new fusion core for quarter-price, last time the engineers miscalculated and left the _Eclector's_ hold overflowing with radioactive waste? Yondu's smirk grows. He takes a mental note of that description, and reminds himself to clear a spot on the next suicide-run. “Mm-hm. You gotta type, Obfonteri? Somethin' you ain't telling me?”

He keeps his tone light and teasing, and lets Kraglin sputter through desperate denials for a full thirty seconds before sniggering and stealing the rest of his drink. Not that he needs it before his night shift. At this rate he'll be buzzing until morning – but he's finished his bowl of Beasties, and it's easier to fill his mouth with crushed soldier pills and sugar than words.

Kraglin's the only dolt brave enough to interrupt his dinner (besides Quill, who's off spinning tales of his exploits to unamused Ravagers in the food line, who have to choose between listening or giving up their place. Each retelling is embellished upon more than the last. The simple bag-and-tag job has grown increasingly similar to the plot of that dumb _Indy-Anna-Jones_ film that Quill insists is the height of Terran culture. He's already gone from facing a single Skrull soldier to going up against a firing squad, and Yondu occasionally tunes into the one-sided conversations to check if Galactus himself has showed up.)

He and Kraglin have a table to themselves. If anyone with audial-enhancements is in the vicinity, they have the decency to pretend they ain't eavesdropping.

Yondu finishes with a smack of his lips and a burp, leaving only a mouthful at the bottom, frothy and sickly-sweet. He delivers the mug, warmed by his hands, without bothering to wipe. Kraglin doesn't either. He lifts the offering, eyes wide and reverent, and presses his lips to where Yondu's had been just moments before.

It would be outright flirty, if he were watching him from under lowered lashes rather than from his peripherals. He jumps when Yondu pats his Mohawk.

“You enjoy that while you can, kid.” Yondu strains greasy strands through his fingers, not lingering long enough to be accused of affection. He speaks casually, flippantly, like he's giving the time of day.

Perhaps he ought to follow it up with a promise of _I'll show ya what real blue tastes like._ Smear sleaze like honey in a fly trap to lure Kraglin back towards him. He should make the most of the caffeine-high building in his blood: excuse Kraglin from duties, invite him back to his quarters, present himself to be fucked for however long and hard Kraglin pleases, gasp in all the right places, and keep his eyes open when he moans his name...

But while he calculates that this would be the optimum means of keeping his first mate loyal, the words refuse to come. Yondu doesn't force them.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Not long before I smack you all with a massive whump-shaped mallet.**


	6. In which Peter runs away

Peter runs away.

Peter runs away a lot, nowadays. He supposes it's only natural – he's been running all his life. From his mom and her thin limp hand. From hungry space pirates. From a scared little tow-haired boy with only a backpack and a Walkman to his name, a part of whom, Peter fears, has been left behind on Terra, never to return.

And now, he runs from Yondu too. Not because he treats him badly – although he does. Not because he hurts him – although he does that too, albeit with less regularity now that Peter hits back.

Peter runs because he's sixteen years old, because he's angry and hurt at the sheer _unfairness_ of it all, and because last week they'd had business in a Kree market and he'd seen his first slave.

Peter's age, or so proclaimed the placard by her feet. She was small enough that you wouldn't have guessed: height stunted from malnutrition and body so thin that it took a moment to process what was a limb and what was a neck. That was dangling beneath the weight of a heavy yellow collar, closed with magnets and the buzz of a forcefield. Her back was polka-dotted with brands: initials and insignias of owners past, sprinkled across her skin like the badges pinned on Peter's schoolbag, now faded and a crumbly with rust.

Peter had stepped forwards, one hand on his pistol. Yondu had pulled him back.

“Keep walkin',” he'd growled, shoving Peter for the trading hall’s far-off gate. Then, when Peter made to disobey, Yondu gripped his bicep tight enough to sting and closed the distance between them, until Peter could feel the rake of sour breath across his fresh-grown stubble. “And thank all the stars in the galaxy that her lot ain't yours.”

After that, Peter hadn't just walked. He'd _sprinted._

He'd wanted nothing but away – away from the girl and the deep-set emotionless pits of her eyes; away from the Ravagers, who were enjoying the other delicacies of this station (robot whores and moonshine-vendors) without care for the slave market in their midst. And first and foremost, away from _Yondu_ , who stood before that girl until her seller hoisted her by the collar and held her out to him, imploring him to have a feel and see if she was to his liking.

He didn't finish that sentence, because his voicebox was making way for an arrow. But by then, Peter had already gone.

So all in all, you'd think there'd be nothing Peter was better at than running away. However, for a kid with so much experience, he ain't very good at it.

Peter backs an M-ship out of the dock mid-nightshift (or nightshift for him and Yondu. The _Eclector_ has a rotating operation-cycle, so that the Bridge is never left unmanned and any two folks yearning to butcher each other can be separated by eight hours. Means that Taserface is kept plenty far from Peter, and Yondu can save breath on whistling.)

He gets five kliks before the fuel gauge, whose _empty_ reading he'd bypassed in favor of his glee at the thought of escape, runs dry.

There's still forwards momentum, of course. It carries him steadily away from the _Eclector_ and its looping patrols of M-ships. But without any thrust Peter ain't gonna be steering nowhere gravity doesn't want him to go. His destination's either a planet, a star, or a black hole, each of which are less appealing than the last.

Luckily, there's nothing in immediate-danger range. Peter's first (and last) enemy will be his failing electronics systems.

He refuses to believe it, pulling open the console and subjecting it to prods and pokes that only serve to zap his fingers and erode his already-depleted energy reserves. When he gets nowhere, he decides kicking the console's just as productive.

This phase of troubleshooting lasts a whole hour – by which point the temperature's already dropped and Peter's breath is foaming in the air. He stomps to the cabin. Retrieves a blanket, in preparation for the ordeal to come. Stomps back again. He kicks that panel for another thirty minutes, before caving and comming Yondu.

Yondu wakes to the flicker of Peter's mugshot. It’s projected from the holobead in his comms watch, translucent as if the boy’s already a ghost. He's bleary eyed and yawning, showing his crooked jawful of teeth in an unintentional threat display. When he susses Peter's predicament (from the sulky look on the sixteen-year-old's face, and the dull glow of a console on emergency power in the background) he laughs so hard he probably damn near pisses himself.

Then he gives Peter a heartfelt middle finger, tells him he better pray Yondu wakes up in time to come collect him before they make the jump to the neighboring star-system, over three lightyears away, and goes back to sleep.

The com snaps off. Peter returns to booting the console, swearing, and – once his ship's battery drains to the point where it can only sustain the most vital life support functions – shivering too. Next morning, just when he's convinced it's over, that Yondu's either forgotten or doesn't care, or has decided it's better for everyone if he leaves his Terran annoyance for dead, there's a dying pleep from the beacons. The harsh white glare of an M-ship's front headlamps splits the night like a chisel.

Peter throws up his hands. They do little to protect him. The beams stream through them, lighting his fingers jellyfish pink. As the painful blotches clear from his vision, which has by now adapted to the gloom, Peter squints into the brilliance to see his savior.

Shadows consolidate around Yondu's shape. In particular, his grin: a bright yellow slice across the blue.

The comm gushes on again. It brings with it the static of interference, as their ships' forcefields merge and collide. But that crackle can't drown out Yondu's laughter, or the sound of his captain slapping his leg.

Peter refuses to admit he'd been afraid he wouldn't hear either of those things again.

Eventually, Yondu tires of mocking him from the comfort of his _Warbird_ (or realizes that Peter's only got five minutes left before the oxygenerators’ output starts to dwindle). He locks his magnetic docking tunnel onto Peter's. Their ships, _Milano_ and _Warbird,_ orange-and-blue and grey-and-red, conjoin. They're alone in the empty blank between star-systems, the only objects, bar the _Eclector,_ for a lightyear to either side.

One of Peter's thrusters guttered before the other, setting him in a rotation that keeps queasiness on the cusp of discomfort in his stomach. Yondu has to calibrate his own speed to match it before the airtight seal can engage. But when it does, it's heralded by a familiar hiss, and the bleeping, flashing return of Peter's warning systems, as Yondu diverts a portion of his _Warbird’s_ power to Peter's _Milano_ in the spacefarer's equivalent of mouth-to-mouth.

The cap'n swaggers out of the cockpit to deliver his laugh in person (and a clip to the ear, in punishment for nearly getting himself killed or not making a permanent job of it). But when he clocks how hard Peter's shivering, rather than hitting him he drops his coat over his shoulders, all but smothering him in stinky red leather. He drags him from the glimmering, ice-crusted shell of the newly-christened _Milano,_ icicles dripping from the ceiling where water pipes had ruptured in the freeze, and bundles him into a bunk that Peter suspects might be his own.

“Sleep,” he says, shoving him so he sprawls across the mattress. “I expect ya to work double-shift tomorrow, to make up for the fuel quarts ya cost me with this stunt.”

“Ship was runnin' on fumes,” Peter grumbles, even as he snuggles into the threadbare pillow, dragging the coat tighter around him. “Didn't cost you shit, boss.”

Everything smells of Yondu here. Bad breath and leather, radiation and engine grease. Peter squeezes the cushion in his arms, trying to pretend it's hugging back, and decides he'll only complain if the scent clings in the morning.

There's a slow scrape of buckles down the wall. Yondu slides to sit, punctuated by the crack of his spine and the resultant groan. Peter opens one eye.

“You're old. You should take the bed.”

Another middle finger. There's untold gunk under Yondu's cracked nail. It's layered up like sediment. Might even be a few fossils, if you excavated. Peter rubs his cheek on the stinky sheets and yawns, warmth seeping into him slow.

“Hey, boss?”

“Mm?”

“What happened to her?”

“To who now?”

“The girl.” If Peter weren't near drop-off point he might notice the pull of tension through Yondu's shoulders. As it is, he only catches the moment when Yondu sighs noisily, slouching until his chin bumps off his chest when he talks.

“What girl?”

Peter sighs too, for different reasons. “Nothin'.”

He shoves the coat off, kicking with sudden viciousness until the heavy shoulderplates  slump over the bedside and the rest crumples after it, dragged to the floor by artificial gravity. Peter tugs the blanket up until only a tuft of gingery hair can be seen, and rolls to face the wall.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **So that didn't go as planned.**


	7. In which there is a bar fight

Looking back, the clues have always been there. They've stewed on the backburner of Peter's brain since he was first yanked off Terra. Clips of speech, hints of body language, nuances of tone. Everything was there - it just hadn't been arranged in a comprehensible sequence.

Until now.

_Count yerself lucky hitting you's all I did._

_This ain't a childhood?_

_I'm tryin'. Y'know that, don't ya?_

Well, Yondu might be trying, but it's damn hard to parent a brat when you've got no point of reference. Peter gets that. He does. At the end of the day though, Yondu's tragic backstory, whatever it may be, doesn't make up for shit. 

It certainly doesn't justify those bursts of pain from where Yondu's palm met his cheek, again and again, too many times for Peter to recall them all individually. The fresh-slapped flush had faded fast, but each blow had left a scar just as deep as those he's accruing at the hands of jilted girlfriends.

However, what's been revealed by the renegade Accuser at the bar, the same Kree Accuser who's swiftly due an audience with Lady Thanatos, surpasses Peter's expectations.

The arrow whips around him, whistle shrill to deafening. Peter, shellshocked by the suddenness of it all, can't react. He's frozen. Paralyzed, helpless. So he's lucky really, that even in the throes of his fury, Yondu keeps Quill exempt from the killing spree.

And so, Peter watches. He's detached from the action. From the screams, from the violence, from the squirt of blood up his cheek (it twitches, when one of the Kree tries to grab him for a hostage. He doesn't take a pace, before an arrowhead punctures his eye socket from behind). Peter can only stare, as he's blasted with blue blood from every direction, and pour this new knowledge into his mind.

He fills the gaps left by Yondu's eternal contradictions (never an _I love ya_ , but never an _I can't fuckin' stand ya_ either: never a hug when Peter was low but always a smack when he misbehaved, and sometimes, very occasionally, a gentle nudge of a shoulder against his, so long as no one was looking). He observes his captain. 

Yondu's facing away from him. His chest heaves hard enough to make the buckles and other assorted paraphernalia jangle. He's splattered with the remnants of the Kree battalion - who had, until their leader shouted that taunt, been soaking in the comforts of a bar far from Xandarian airspace, where they would have been arrested without trial for their warcrimes. Pretty average stock, for a place like this.

None of them have finished their drinks.

Yondu's blue skin is smeared navy. Gore crusts the fur around his collar. But while he makes for a ghoulish sight; stood over the bodies, which fan out around him like felled trees in an impact crater, breath snarling from him and eyes deep in shadow; for the first time since he met the guy, Peter doesn't feel fear. Or frustration, for that matter. Or even that strange fondness, which prevented him from cutting his ties with the Ravagers as soon as Yondu gifted him with official activation codes for the ship Quill’s been flying since he was old enough to see over the dash, and tried to pronounce the _Milano's_ name.

He feels pity.

Yondu can't abide that.

His arrow buzzes in loops, fast as an angry wasp and a thousand times more deadly. Radiation lashes in all directions. The sizzling string shatters the solar-panels above. The tinkle and the crash are barely audible, over the tinnitus from that high, constant whistle.

Once the sparks have crackled away, the arrow is the only light. It bathes the tavern in vibrant red. Its twisting, writhing passage hints at inner turmoil – and Yondu must realize this, because as soon as the last Kree botches his attempt to stand and collapses face-first in a puddle of his own viscera, Yondu lets the whistle ebb. 

The echo rings in Peter's ears far longer. It muffles all other noise.

The whimpers of the dying. The final exhalations of the dead. The crunch of Yondu's boot-treads over bodies and broken glass, as he storms to Peter and shakes him by the lapels.

Peter's bigger now. He couldn't be budged if he didn't want to be. But he lets his muscles go lax, lets his captain scream and froth in his face, lets him roar _don't'chu look down on me, you idjit Terran, or I'll kill you, I'll kill you like I killed 'em all; and if you think for one second I can't I'll prove you wrong._

A part of him wants to catch him in his arms. Wants to hug and hold every furious blue inch. But while Peter may be an idjit Terran, he's not suicidal.

 _He didn't want me to know,_ he realizes, staring into the desperate mess of Yondu's face, warped around a scowl and slathered in multiple coats of blood. _He ain't angry. He's ashamed._

The battle had been decided in seconds, before the Kree could fumble their weapons from their holsters. Peter, accustomed to the speed with which his captain can bring an army to its knees, had finished his drink before turning to find him twizzling his arrow slowly through the Kree boss's eardrum and into the brain cavity beyond.

The sadism of that death had been the trigger. It clicked in Peter's mind then and there, that the bastard hadn’t just been talking shit for the hell of it.

Peter shudders at the memory. That moment of realization, when all those scraps were stitched together in his mind like the hints in a Cludo game, hurt almost as much as Yondu’s slaps. Knowing what he now knows, he can't feel sorry for the dead Accuser. But he does wish he could cram those words back in his big blue mouth and rewind the smashed chronometer above the bar, so he could hustle Yondu to the next dive joint along and avoid this entirely.

He doesn't have the infinity stone for time travel, and wouldn't know how to use it if he did. There's only him, and his captain, and the mountain of felled Kree, the barman having long-since fled.

...And one untouched glass, which stands besides Peter's empties. The liquor inside it – promisingly potent-smelling – is settling from the thump of Peter's back against the counter.

Slowly, slowly, he reaches out. His eyes train on Yondu's, unblinking. He wants him to track his movements, to know he isn’t going for a weapon.

Yondu's teeth are bared. Every silver-dipped fang is on display. But when Peter nudges the glass towards him, that rage simmers down from the boil.

Caked blood coats him. It cracks around the crinkles of Yondu's snarl, and when that expression leaves his face those cracks form stripes of brighter blue, visible through the indigo. Without anger to animate him, Yondu looks defeated. Worn out. Every one of his forty-some years.

But he ain't finished yet. He smacks the glass from Peter's hands, turning before he hears the smash.

Peter does reach for him then. “Captain -”

He cards air an inch from Yondu's sleeve. A whistle, and the arrow poises besides his ear, ready to re-enact that grisly death scene.

It's an empty threat. So Peter hopes.

“I ain't gonna tell nobody,” he says, quiet and sincere. “I promise, captain.”

Yondu's laugh is too shaky for his liking. The arrow doesn't dip. But when Peter reaches out and catches it, the radiation doesn't lick straight through his skin. He holds it where Yondu won't allow himself to be held. Then tosses it into the air, like he's releasing a bird to the wild.

Yondu's lips purse in an instinctive whistle. His crest glows as he guides it to rest in its holster, and a fraction – just a fraction – of the tension slides from his shoulders.

Peter forces a smile. “There you go, sir.”

Yondu doesn't say nothing.

Peter scuttles after him as he stomps for the exit, hopping over cadavers that Yondu callously tramps, uncaring if his boots squish throats or faces. “And I mean it. Not a word. As soon as we leave this shithole, none of this happened.”

Yondu's silence persists. But he shoots Peter a furtive glance and side-steps out the door, daring him to make good on his promise. Peter does so.

Try as he might to banish the memory though, he can't. The jibes the drunk Kree had hollered - _“I know what you are, Udonta!_ _Didn't think they let your kind of scum in here. How are you going to pay for that drink? Through fighting? Labour? Service? Fucking? Or are you multi-purpose?”_ \- have sunk into the overworked part of his brain that's dedicated to understanding his captain.

Knowing that Yondu had a shitty childhood makes Peter's feel better in comparison. But it hardly provides closure. Yondu ain't the only one who grew unloved, and Peter's not gonna forgive and forget in the blink of an eye.

 ...Or the wag of a blue tongue, which is lying severed several meters from its owner.

Why should he? He learned his grudge-holding skills from the best, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **So - Peter's learned a few things.**


	8. In which an Infinity Stone is stolen

Peter runs away again. This time he fuels his M-ship first.

No one looks twice at the clanking, rumbling fuel pod as it empties its compressed load into the _Milano's_ engines. Because to the average Ravager – hell, to the cap'n himself – this is nothing less and nothing more than a regular mission.

Retrieve orb. Receive pay-out. Result.

Peter and Kraglin alone have been confided with details, and those are meager scrapings indeed – merely that they'll be paid through a middleman, meaning that the client is high-profile as well as wealthy; and that if they don't quit asking questions Yondu'll stick their fool heads together with his arrow, which means the captain has reasons for playing this one close to the chest.

Peter suspects those reasons are shaped like an overflowing bank vault. Well, he's had enough of only receiving a fraction of what he deserves come payday. He figures that if he completes this job all on his lonesome, from theft to courier-duty to drop-off, even when Yondu catches up with him he won't have an excuse for subtracting the sum from Peter's accounts (which are, as ever, tight on the verge of ruptured, now that Yondu flatly refuses to bail him out whenever he's caught with fingers in pockets (or up the skirts of mobsters’ giggling wives)).

Peter's gonna pull this one solo. He's going to prove to Yondu once and for all that he doesn't need him to hold his hand – or to smack him around the head when he gets himself in shit, which is far more in-character.

He dithers over leaving a message. His index crests the tip of the panel on the holoscreen, making pixels fizz and flutter as they try to work out whether or not that's a command. It's the middle of their night cycle. Yondu'll be even grumpier if Peter wakes him to tell him he's deserting than if he leaves it until morning. Plus, Peter's gonna need all the head-start he can get.

No, he decides, dismissing the blue mugshot from the _Milano's_ holoscreen. Best let this sail onwards to its natural conclusion. Yondu will suss his plans soon enough, once Peter misses their rendezvous. By then, Peter'll be halfway to Xandar, before Yondu can so much as whistle and tug his non-existent hair in frustration.

In case it all goes tits-up, he swings by a lil' station port and hooks up with an old fling, so at least he'll have something nice to remember while an arrow bores through his throat. Beery, or something. She's a pink-skinned chick: cute and smart and peppy and entirely his type, but in the wrong place and at the wrong time for Peter to do more than love her and leave her. It's only when they're ambling through the dilapidated undercity, Peter nodding along to Bereet's chatter and sneaking surreptitious ogles of the perfect silicone rounds of the bot-hookers' breasts, who flog their wares to passing merchants outside each neon-lit bordello, that he realizes he's been here before.

A subterranean market, hewn into the potbelly of an asteroid.

A coughing chattel of thin children.

Yondu's blank gaze as the girl was offered, and then his denial that she'd even existed when Peter worked up the guts to ask.

Knowing what he now knows, Peter's direst suspicions about what transpired (Yondu dragging the kid to a brothel in search of a hire-out booth) don't seem feasible. But while he's assured that Yondu isn't an out-and-out monster, he'd still left her there. After his trial-by-cold in the _Milano,_ Peter had stolen a roster from Kraglin’s work station and nosied through the new recruits. There were always some. Each new port brought variation among their numbers. The Ravager census ebbed and flowed as scared men ran, mutinous men were disposed of, and desperate men donned the reds, died, and were stripped of them again.

Peter had combed every fresh face, but he hadn't seen the slave.

She'd been too weak for the Ravager life. Too frail, too sickly. They're pirates, not nursemaids. Those are words that have been thrown at Yondu more than once in protest to Peter's own presence. Peter wouldn't put it past Yondu to have killed her in some misguided attempt at _mercy._ It's the same sort of screwed-up worldview that makes the captain think smacking a small Terran about when he misbehaves suffices for an education _._

It's as he's encouraging Bereet for one last round on the slot machines in a noisy, beeping casino, that he spies the madame of the institution opposite. She's making her rounds, greeting loyal patrons and new customers with a variety of individually calibrated smiles. She's also fat. Not hugely so – more as if she hadn't known what a good meal was for a very long time, and once she found out, she couldn't stop. And when she turns...

Bereet's running commentary drivels away as Peter's arm tightens round her shoulders, then relaxes.

“Peter?” she asks, resting her cheek on the leather. “Are you alright?”

“That bastard.” But he sounds admiring, and tips the madame a nod that she returns more out of habit than recognition, her sunken eyes far brighter than they'd been last time he'd seen them. “C'mon. I got a heist to pull – wanna hang around for the ride?”

 

* * *

 

Xandar happens. It's strange, Peter thinks, how all those silent life beacons, as Nova ships shattered and squelched under the _Dark Aster's_ weight, and the heartbreak of Groot's sacrifice, and the fear of his and his friends' impending death-by-Infinity Stone, can be crammed into two words.

_Xandar happens._

But happen it does, and the Prime tells them how very grateful they all are, but could the Guardians please vacate Xandarian airspace before Rocket patches together a bomb from wiring stolen from the walls of the Nova HQ, which actually _will_ blow up the planet.

Peter's glad to be underway. He suspects the Guardians – his friends, his family, his everything – are too. They aren't made for the sedate chug of domesticity. Peace, safety, comfort... All these things are alien to them. A week of R&R on Xandar sets an itch under Peter's skin, and he can't wait to be among the open stars again.

He supposes he has Yondu to thank for this restless need to keep moving. After his abduction, Peter grew up never knowing when to expect a smack or a smile. So now that there's only smiles, and a gun hasn’t been drawn on him for seven whole days (other than Rocket’s, when Peter accidentally treads on his tail, but that's deserved) he's constantly on edge, waiting for the other shoe to drop. He's too easy to flinch, and too slow to laugh it off when the other Guardians notice.

“He was about the only family I had,” he had told Gamora as they stood, battered and bloodied, under the wreckage of the _Dark Aster._

Gamora had touched his shoulder and said “No he wasn't,” and Peter had nodded along.

Oddly, he regrets that as they set a course for the outer regions, as far from the Ravager flagship's radiation signature as they can get. He doesn't want to contemplate what'll be done to Yondu, when his men discover they've been fooled. He certainly doesn't want to imagine what Yondu'll do to him when he catches him. Captain's gonna be pissed, that's for sure. Pissed, betrayed, angry – not proud of him in the slightest...

He really is a disappointment. Stupid sentimental Terran. Just like Yondu always said.

Gamora tips his chin with a delicate finger. “Peter. You are upset.”

“I just...” Words don't come easily. “I miss it, sometimes,” he settles on, scooting over on his cabin bunk to make space for her, gathering the new tape and the accompanying bundle of headphone wires onto his lap. His fingers smooth over familiar plastic tabs, worm dull from constant handling. “Don't you? Weren't there good times, as well as bad?”

Gamora, to her credit, does ponder the question. She shakes her head only after giving it due thought. “Thanos was all I knew. But while some hours of the day held the semblance of _goodness,_ it was all a ploy to win my trust, to make me his obedient daughter that he might use me for his whims.”

Peter sags. Noticing, Gamora shifts so their knees brush and rests a slim palm on his thigh – not high enough for Peter to get excited about it (more's the pity), but with a comforting squeeze.

“Your story does not have to emulate mine.”

“Huh?”

“I'm saying...” The hand delivers a pat, awkward in the way of one unaccustomed to giving comfort. “I'm saying that you don't need to have been torn apart and put together again in order to run away. I'm saying that if there is good, but the bad outweighs it – or even if the bad is just a little too much to ignore – you still have the right to leave. It is your life. Your choice.”

Great. Now she's _counselling_ him. Some leader Peter's turning into. Isn't he supposed to be the one who provides shoulders to cry on, not the other way around?

And yet, he thinks as he leans his head atop of hers, gaze dragging to the empty space in his bedside cubby where a troll-doll had once sat, he's grateful. Even captains need someone to hold them, every once in a while.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **I love everyone who comments. So much.**


	9. In which Peter is caged

Peter wakes in a cell. That's nothing new. He's also naked, which is disconcerting, but as (to his knowledge) he has yet to be probed, he doesn't think much of it.

His vision is fuzzy. The bars in front of his nose wobble and waver like he's trying to walk in a straight line after three pints of Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster. Anything beyond them is a lost cause. His cage is suspended from the ceiling in a larger room, but that's all he can tell you. His eyes refuse to make sense of the surroundings. It's only the drag of gravity that tells him which way is up or down.

The swing of the cage is worse than sleeping in a hammock during a cosmic storm. Peter moans. Shutting his sore eyes again, he presses his forehead to the bars for five whole blissful seconds.

Wouldn't it be nice, to rest a while? Sure, the position he's been dumped in is far from the most comfortable – he's on his knees with his back bent horizontally over them, trapped in an enforced Child’s Pose, or a genuflection to some unseen king. He doesn't know how long he's been out. But the sandwich of his legs between his upper body and the bars has left them striped with painful pressure-welts.

Given how nauseous moving makes him, it's tempting to stay put until the bars bore through his shins and out the other side. However, he recalls one of Yondu's many lessons, taught through pain and drummed in with fists.

_Never sit around waitin' to be rescued when ya could be sparin' me the hassle._

If Yondu finds out he's spent his internment drowsing, rather than actively searching for an escape route… Screw smacking Peter. He'll whistle him through and make good on his threat of roasting him for brunch.

Only Peter isn't running with the Ravagers, so he doesn't have to worry about that anymore.

Peter sighs to himself, knotting together the threads of the last couple of months until they're tied in a coherent string. He'd traitored Yondu. Stolen the orb and robbed his band of their biggest payday since the days they ran with Stakar. If Yondu's as heartless as he purports to be, he'll want Peter dead like the rest.

It's the Guardians Peter's relying upon. While they're a lot less quick-to-smack, he supposes he ought to make a token attempt at freeing himself, out of courtesy if nothing more.

Peter uncurls. Then tucks tight again when his shoulders and shins bonk painfully off the cage, causing the entire contraption to sway.

“Aw, fuck...”

Seems like moving is out. Peter can still check himself for wounds though, try to work out how he got here in the hopes it'll give him some clue as to what his captors want. 

The assessment of his injuries is a mechanical process akin to meditation. Peter concentrates on the sensation delivered by the nerves in every limb, cataloging and assessing every hurt for its severity. In the old days, it would be so that when he was shoved in to see the Ravager sawbones, he could give her a comprehensive list. The Nova Corps' reconstruction of his Milano had included a near state-of-the-art medbay though, featuring gizmos from automatic hand santitizers to one of those funky bacta-tank things that sends nanite-bots to target any injury. This internal assessment isn't actually necessary anymore – Quill can just run a scanner over himself to find out where he's hurting. But it's habit, and it keeps him calm, and it stops him from focusing on his shins.

What he finds – bruises, but from being dragged and hauled about unconscious rather than from fighting; and a hot prickle on the back of his knee – is revealing.

He's been darted. With what, Peter doesn't know. But whatever it is, it's powerful. It makes his muscles slow and his brain sluggish, even now, stars-know how many hours after administration. When he tries to stand, using the cell bars for handholds, he damn near flops straight over again. Especially because he clonks his head before he can reach his knees.

“What the hell?” His voice is a sickly croak. His skull throbs, as if the imprint of the overhead cage roof has been carved into it. When Peter looks up he sees bars wobbling not five inches above him. The walls ain't much further from him. He's crammed in a poky box, and judging by the electronic hum of a nearby forcefield, it'll take more than a crowbar to get him free.

Now, Peter's not claustrophobic. The pipes in the Eclector had been his salvation from ravenous space-pirates as a child, and after the incident with the Stavloxian cannon, Yondu'd insisted he practise wriggling through all manner of cramped spaces, like a hamster in a tube-maze. But with his vision still consolidating, the bars of the cage are all he can see.

They loom in, crushing and oppressive. When Peter writhes in sudden panic and tries to boot them, his back clonks more, and his knees jar painfully.

He's trapped. Trapped and helpless and desperate, immobilized to the point where he can't turn round. Encased in a tiny coffin.

“No,” he hisses. Kicks out again, bare toes wedging painfully through the bars. He strains at the little cage, testing its flex point, but his muscles are too lax from the drug to be of any use, especially against forcefields. “No, no, no, no -”

“He's getting agitated,” observes a cold voice from beyond Peter's field of vision. He can't twist to see them, but he tries anyway, noisy in his panic, bashing himself off the cage and ricocheting from the walls.

“No! No, lemme out, lemme out, I ain't done nothing -”

“I believe we have the footage we require.” A hand reaches through the bars – oh perfect; they're constructed from holomatter, coded to varying states of solidity as according to biosignatures. He can be touched from the outside even if he has no hope of leaving.

The hand smooths his bare spine, slow and casually possessive. “Keep him tranquilized. And remember – don't hurt him. We want Udonta to come quietly.” 

 

* * *

 

Yondu ain't never gone quietly in his life. He doesn't plan on starting now.

He laughs when the self-proclaimed _Guardians of the Galaxy_ show him the clip; laughs right in their stony faces.

“So lemme get this straight,” he wheezes, clutching his gut as he wipes a tear from his eye. “Lil Star-Lord's got himself in shit. And you come running to _daddy_ to sort it out?”

“You are not his father,” is Gamora's only reply.

On the screen she's holding, the video loops. Peter wakes, gives himself a check over just like Yondu taught him, and then – the complete opposite of his lessons – starts to panic. It's soundless, but Yondu doesn't have to hear the harsh pants of Quill's breath to know he's moments away from hyperventilation. For a brat who spent so much time in the ventilation pipes, Quill sure ain't appreciative of this confined space.

Which is mighty funny to Yondu. Because before he'd been selected as a battle slave, he'd been packed into a wee little cage whenever his masters didn't want him, like a display ornament that could be folded up and put away.

A part of Yondu wonders if this is another lesson Quill's in need of learning. A bigger part is scared this won't teach so much as break. The biggest part of all is furious; utterly, rabidly furious; that anyone would dare assume that they can get away with hurting something he's claimed as _his_.

But Yondu'd been taught from birth that nothing was his. Not really. Things could be gifted, but only so that they might later be taken away. How is this any different?

 _It's different,_ supplies the part of Yondu that he uses to fly his arrow, the part he refuses to call a heart, _because you have a chance to get him back again._

His crew's behind him. They ain't gonna rush to Quill's rescue, not without serious financial incentive – so Yondu isn't either. He can't just trot off with the Guardians, let them hand him over and make the exchange without putting up a fight.

He's gotta make 'em work for it.

Which is why when he gives Kraglin and co. their orders - “Back to ship, boys. I'll handle this.” - he whistles his arrow to hover menacingly by his side. Even sends it on a few feints and jabs, spiralling between the Guardians, making them fling themselves to either side and roll like toys tossed by toddlers mid-tantrum.

Yondu chuckles and rubs his hands. He doesn't rough 'em up too seriously – Quill wouldn't like it. And while Yondu professes not to give two shits about what Quill likes or otherwise, the kid already hates him, and there ain't no point adding to that.

As the battle goes on – if it can be called that; it's mostly the Guardians ducking the arrow's sweeps, each carefully calculated to be fast enough to challenge but not enough that they don't have a prayer – Yondu finds himself a rock to sit on. They're on an unpopulated moonbase that never got past the terraforming stage of colonization. It's near-lightless, heated by a dull dwarf star and kept at a perpetual chilly twilight. But it makes a decent no-man's land, one which had been mutually decided on in accordance with the message on the _Eclector's_ screens that morning, sent via Quill's old callsign.

_We want to make a deal. Come alone._

Yondu, of course, had brought his entire posse. They'll be watching from the windows of the shuttle, wondering why he doesn't whistle his arrow in a dance so fast not even Greenie and her cybernetics can keep up. They're whispering among themselves; hypothesizing theories as to why he ain't ended it already, and gutted the Guardians in one fell peep: big lug, green chick, fuzzy rodent, tree.

Kraglin's a good lad. He'll tell 'em that Yondu's just playing with his food.

Yondu almost regrets that he ain't gonna have the chance to say goodbye. They've have had a good run if it, all things considered. There's a loyalty there so deep that it's never going to lose its novelty (and equally, Yondu's never gonna stop expecting a shank between the ribs from behind).

Azrik has long since been disposed of. Every other blue piece of ass Kraglin has openly discussed with him has met similar ends – a tad too many for coincidence. Kraglin's never acknowledged that he knows, but he's also stopped bragging about his conquests when he prods Yondu's coffee over to him in the morning. It could, of course, be because their numbers have dwindled to the point where they're down to a dual rather than a triple watch-shift, and when it changes, the _Eclector_ could be mistaken for the galactic equivalent of a _Mary Celeste_. Kraglin just doesn't want him wasting good men.

Or it could be something else. Kraglin'd certainly seemed flattered, last time Yondu found an excuse to send a pretty blue boy to his death, and Yondu figures that makes him just as fucked up as he is.

But whatever he feels for Kraglin, whatever could've been but wasn't and now will never have the chance to be, it ain’t enough to make Yondu compromise his plan.

He considers it - walking away, and leaving Quill to reap what he's sown. But it’s only in the way a Xandarian white-collar office-trudger might muse about murdering their coworkers on a hectic day. A fantasy to be indulged in, but never implemented.

No. Yondu's mind is made up. His fate has been decided since he saw that stars-damned cage.

His captaincy, his power, the way folks quake at his name, Kraglin… All those things are due to become pleasant memories. They won't inspire hope, or anything foolish like that. Yondu has been freed once before, yes. But that was by sheer fluke. It's been nice while it lasted, but there ain't gonna be a second time. Stakar certainly ain’t gonna come swooping to his rescue. Kraglin might consider it, although when he realizes how hideously outgunned he is he’ll raise a silent glass to his cap’n, bang his chest twice, and move along with his life. Maybe find another lil’ blue guy with emotional issues to dream about sticking his dick into, one Yondu hasn't gotten around to butchering yet.

As for Quill? Quill don't care. Quill hates his guts, just like he's been claiming ever since he was a kid.

Yondu's glad for it. There's nothing stupider than saving someone who’s only gonna toss themselves right back in harm’s way. Especially if they're gonna do it for the sake of a runaway slave, who’s merely being returned to where he belongs.

When he pretends to slip a note, arrow wobbling to match, the Guardians fall for it. It's a ruse that Yondu's used to slaughter enemies across the galaxy's spangled spread, from here to Knowhere and back again.

Most folks he fights against are dumb enough to assume that it's the whistle which controls the arrow's movements. In fact, the whistle's the conduit – the connection between weapon, prosthetic and wearer. But there ain't no need for the Guardians to know that.

Yondu feigns shock as Greenie's blade caresses his neck. His hands raise slow.

There are shouts from his shuttle. Kraglin's readying a blaster, clacking plasma shells into place with a determination that borders frenzied; while Taserface claims they ought to cut their losses and blast off. He's already got a rally of support. Anyone who can take down their cap'n ain't to be messed with, and as there's no money on the line, the Ravagers won't risk their necks for an unloved blue bastard who's failed them one time too many.

If Yondu believed in deities, he would pray to them that Krags ain't dumb enough, or sentimental enough, to argue. He doesn't, so he doesn't bother. But nevertheless, he hopes.

He rises as Greenie exerts pressure, enough to open a shallow slice the length of his throat. “Careful with that, darlin'. Could cause a guy some serious injury.”

“Gag him,” snarls Greenie. “We can't have him whistling.” The other Guardians um and ah between them, and Drax starts tugging off his boot. If Yondu's gonna do this, he's gotta resign himself to humiliation. But he ain't collared yet, and champing on a sweaty sock in full view of his men ain't the way he wants to be remembered.

“My belt,” he says, nodding down himself. He smirks at the other Guardians when Greenie undoes it, a suggestive little hook of lip over fang that makes the lot of 'em bristle.

Perfect. Can't have 'em thinking he's anything other than an enemy.

He accepts the stiff leather between his teeth with the same smirking arrogance, projecting the certainty that he'll be free in no time. When Gamora pushes him forwards, their big lug gripping one of his arms and the rodent levelling a blaster at him, the twiglet on his shoulder glaring like he's stomped on its puppy, Yondu ambles happily along, assured that everything’s going to plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **:drumroll: let the whump begin**


	10. In which Gamora tries her hand at interrogation

The Guardians chain his wrists behind his back. Nova-issue cuffs - purported to be impossible to break free of without sacrificing the use of opposable thumbs. They don't bother with ankle-hobbles or collars though, which is nice of 'em. Still, Yondu's glad he took a leak before answering their call – he doubts any of Quill's buddies would be amenable to unzipping him, or giving him a good shake-out afterwards.

It's a long day's ride to Hala, the Kree Homeworld. They've been assured that Peter won't be harmed, so long as the drop off is made promptly and without faff. The Guardians will keep the arrow on ship. The Rodent and the Twig will deliver Yondu, Drax and Gamora to the prearranged rendezvous, then retreat out-of-atmosphere so that even if Yondu gnaws through the belt, his yaka will be out of range.

Then the exchange will be made. Quill will go free. Yondu won't. It's like segments in a flow diagram. No emotion attached – just a cause and an effect.

Quill lives.

Yondu dies (after however-many years of servitude his old masters plan on squeezing out of him first).

Everything's alright in the galaxy.

He's looking forwards to it, in a sick sort of way. Seems fitting that things should come full circle. Stakar had only professed regret for snipping his collar once – at the tribunal, when Yondu stood with his head bowed before his old friend and accepted every harsh truth thrown at him in silence. It had sounded like he meant it. And it ain’t like Yondu can fault him - because on some days, like today, the removal of that collar is his biggest regret too.

He fucked up with Quill. He knows it, although denial's a sweet mistress and a part of him insists he's only ever done right by the kid; that he taught him and beat him just enough to keep him sharp, keep him safe, keep him _alive._

But true though that may be, Quill deserves more. As Yondu ain't never gonna _be_  more, it's better for everyone if this follows through. Because no matter how far he runs, he's never been able to escape this. Who he is. _What_ he is.

Nothing.

He's relaxed when Gamora enters the cabin to tell him they have an hour to go. Her eyes thin, suspicious in a way Quill never is, no matter how often or how hard Yondu hits him. Wise girl. He'd like her, if he could be bothered to muster emotion for someone he’s never gonna see again.

“Why are you so calm?” she asks. It ain't like he can answer, but she keeps talking anyway: “You know what the Kree do to their prisoners?”

Huh. If she’s asking that then she doesn't know about his past - which means Quill’s kept his word, and Yondu's secrets. Idiot. Ain’t Yondu taught him better? _W_ _eakness_ and _vulnerability_ are to be capitalized on, not pandered to.

Yondu can't tell her that at least those with bounties on their heads are killed fast. Runaway slaves? They go slow. Worked to death, if they're lucky.

He just shrugs, sat crosslegged on the patch of floor he's been allocated, and stares out at the familiar constellation of skeletal space-ports and Kree warships that spiral around Hala in bright concentric rings. Home sweet home.

Greenie watches him. Her stare would burrow under Yondu's skin, if he hadn't cultivated it to a thickness that rivals the scummy crust that builds on the surface of the _Eclector's_ sewage tanks. As it is, he simply sits still, twisted to the porthole. He lets her gaze pick him apart, like he let her and her little friends win this match, like he let the Ravagers go, like he's resigned himself to the dig of the belt on either sides of his mouth and the humiliation of being bound, and the worse things that are sure to follow.

Greenie pads forwards. Those limbs may be slim, but there's enough power in them to wrench Yondu's head from his shoulders. And yet she’s wary, so very wary, like she's the one who’s backed into a corner. She crouches, forearms propped on her knees, studying his face in profile.

“You're really this helpless without your weapon?” Yondu snorts. Her head tips to one side, hair spilling over her shoulder in a soft purple cloud. Her glare, in contrast, is as cold-forged as the steel at her hip. “Peter said you were a terrible person.”

He ain't gonna deny it. He shrugs. But Gamora shakes her head.

“Terrible people don't sacrifice themselves for their children. I should know. I was raised by one.” She's changed her tune. Wasn't she the one who said he wasn't Quill's father, and never would be? His chortle is near-soundless, muffled by the belt, noise trapped in his throat. Despite the lacking volume it wracks his shoulders, back smacking off the wall. Greenie doesn't look nearly so amused.

“If you're looking to die, I'm not going to help you,” she warns. Yondu's snigger cuts off.

Shit. She's too smart for her own good, this one. Too smart, but also way too stupid. Doesn't she understand the nature of an exchange? Him for Quill, one life for another?

Her green fingers hover, an inch off the belt buckle, where it digs a fresh bruise into Yondu's cheek. He stares at her, flat and serious. When she starts to undo it, he ducks away.

Greenie chases him, relentless as Quill himself. Yondu can see why they're drawn to each other. Brings warmth to his fond old heart. Maybe Taserface and the rest are right – he _is_ going soft. But one fact remains: if Greenie wants her happy ending, Yondu has to go. So long as he lives, his crew will bay for him to hunt their renegade down. And so long as Yondu's old slave brands remain hidden behind his captain's coat and his Ravager flame, the Kree are gonna keep Quill in bondage.

A life for a life. One box on the flow diagram begets another. And eventually, the entire thing will loop back on itself, like Yondu can see his life looping back now. The end is tied to the beginning, in a neat knot shaped like a noose – or perhaps a slave's collar.

When Greenie gets hold of the belt, Yondu does the only thing he can think of to prove he ain't worth saving. He presses the cuff on the ball of his thumb until it jolts from its socket with a wet pop. Then, ignoring the pain with the ease of a man accustomed to worse, he wrenches his fist free before the automated tightening mechanism can clamp, and punches her in the face.

His upper hand lasts no more than a second. Greenie wrestles him down. It's nicer to have a pretty green lass on his back than a Kree, so Yondu makes the most of it.

He goes lax, fight leaving his muscles as soon as it entered, and smirks up at her round the belt. If it weren't for the bloody drool collecting round the corners of his mouth, it'd be charming.

Greenie growls. She gives his shoulder one last shove, bouncing it off the floor, and clambers off to assess his dislocated thumb. She wrenches the joint back into place, and the pain intensifies – a sick sort of ache that eats his hand from the inside. The cuffs are cranked until they cut blood supply from his wrists, and Gamora can't help but fire a parting shot as she stomps for the exit:

“Very well. Die then. But Peter will know what you did for him, and he'll hate you for this.”

Her words provide all the closure Yondu needs. He bites the inside of his cheeks to counteract his throbbing hand, and sighs.

Quill's gonna be mad, alright. Kid never could stand it when other folks took his falls. Far too much of a sense of _justice._

Yondu flexes his numb fingers, cuffs gouging the meat of his arms. He watches the approaching asteroid, and he tells himself that it's okay, because Peter hates him anyway.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **I keep saying 'whump begins next chapter' and this time I mean it. Sorta. I'll upload the next one tonight, as this one's so short!**


	11. In which Yondu kneels

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Alternative chapter title: in which Yondu gets nekkid**

Unfortunately, Quill ain't a smart kid. Never has been, never will be. Too much music in his head; doesn't leave any space for calculation or cruelty, let alone self-preservation. When he sees Yondu being walked towards his new masters he screams his name, bashing his forehead off the cage.

It's several sizes larger than the one Yondu had been crammed into as a child. But then again Peter's a well-fed and fully-grown Terran, not a little Centaurian savage half-starved from biting the hands that feed him. It still looks tiny as a clown car, when crammed with Quill's six-four of muscle. He's overflowing, biceps bulging between the bars.

Drax points and laughs. “I can see Peter's buttocks! Look how pink they are!”

Gamora is less inclined to humor. Yondu matches her glower, as the Kree standing over Quill stoops, pushing his hand through the forcefield. The metallic sheen parts on contact, a ripple that suckles on his wrist. He strokes Quill's back, leisurely as if he's petting an animal.

Quill stomachs the touch. Yondu remembers his expression from the chipped mirror the slaves had shaved in, before being presented to new potential masters in the auction pens. Greenie bares her teeth, and if it weren't for the belt-gag Yondu would follow suit.

“You said,” hisses Greenie, hand settling on her sword hilt one finger at a time, “that he would not be touched.”

“Not harmed,” the Kree corrects. “There's a difference.”

He lets them stew in that horror for a whole minute before Quill speaks up, shoulders boxy and tense under the Kree's blue hand.

“He's just trying to rile you. Ain't done nothing but jab me with the odd tranquilizer needle.” His eyes are glued to Yondu's, and his voice shakes as he continues. “Said they'd do worse to you.”

Yondu doesn't doubt it. He'd like to convey to the kid that he'll be fine through a waggle of his eyebrows and a wink; act the hardass who can never be hurt, just like that Zardu Hasselfrau Quill rambles about when he's drunk. But he doesn't have the energy to concoct the lie, let alone deliver it with confidence.

Greenie's hand rests on his arm. He expects it to shove him forwards, but it only squeezes. “Yondu...”

He shakes her off. Steps out, of his own accord, and inclines his head in the first and most shallow phase of the Bow of Humility. Then, slowly, under the watchful eye of Guardians, Kree, and Quill alike, he enters the second phase and the third, dropping to his knees and pressing his forehead against the sand.

“No,” Quill whispers.

The Kree nods. “He remembers. Good. You, daughter of Thanos. Remove his cuffs.”

Greenie doesn't quibble over the issue of her parentage. She walks over, whipcord-slim but deceptively heavy thanks to internally-grafted cybernetics. Each fall of her boots makes an audible crunch, crushing sandstone to powder.

The Kree barracks is hot and barren. Their headquarters - a sleek white building - has been rammed into a chunk of tumbling spacerock, terraformed only to the minimum requirements for supporting carbon-based life. Its streamlined platinum walls are hardly inkeeping with the local ambience. But they've spruced up their backyard, albeit in macabre fashion. If Yondu peers to his left and right, from where he's knelt in the dirt, he finds white-picked bone cairns, each one topped with a skull. Triplicate cuffs are still clamped around the skeletons' wrists. Their third rings attach to iron loops, unrusted from the lack of rain, hammered into the arid bedrock.

Slaves. Men, women, children. Those who misbehaved (or misspoke, or misinterpreted) and had been chained out here to bake, until their skin dried to leather and their eyeballs shrunk and wizened, and any soft tissues remaining were weathered away by the gritty wind.

Yondu shuts his eyes. He keeps his browbone against the ground, neck outstretched like he's under a guillotine. He hitches his arms higher behind his back, wriggling stiff fingers.

There's a ghost of a sigh over his nape. It tickles the scarring around the implant, where veins pulse close to the surface and pain radiates whenever there's a solar storm. Then the release combination is inputted, and Gamora unwinds the cuffs, tracing the welts they've left in silent apology.

She can shove that where the sun don't shine. Yondu doesn't need pity – not hers, and no one else's neither. He certainly doesn't need that fierce protective _worry_ , which emanates from the figure before him: Quill, on his elbows and knees, hunkered in his poky slave-cage so he's on Yondu's level.

The Kree smirks at Greenie until she retreats. He grabs Yondu's head, cupping his entire crown, implant and all. In his other hand is a yellow-painted collar, cranked open at the tightening bolt. Rings prong from the front and the back, designed for clipping onto chains. He tips Yondu’s chin back and closes it around his throat with a tenderness that makes his guts twist and his spine shiver, memories pummelling the insides of his skull. It snaps into place, magnetic lock whirring as it shrinks. Even if it hadn’t tightened to the point where his throat can’t bob when he swallows, Yondu would have a hard time breathing. 

No point fighting though. It's comply or be forced. When the Kree searches his eyes, he finds no opposition there.

“Good boy,” he says.

Sweat will soon make the metal chafe, but Yondu spent the first twenty years of his life with permanent neck-sores and a constricted voicebox. He figures it can't be any worse the second time around.

Quill slams the bars, and again when the Kree reels Yondu to stand and pushes his coat from his shoulders. But there's fuck-all he can do until the forcefield's released. They ignore him anyway – Greenie, Drax, Yondu himself – as the Kree starts working on his fly.

Greenie levels her sword at his carotid. “What do you think you're doing.”

“What does it look like?” A rasp, a tug, a draft. Yondu's pants fold around his knees. He's bared to his boxer briefs. The tatty edges trail against his thighs like the world's scruffiest lingerie lace-job. “Take off your boots. This 'Star-lord' will need clothes.”

Greenie nods to Yondu. “Those belong to him.”

Oh, silly girl.

Yondu, fiddling with his boot zippers, sniggers. He earns himself a slap; the Kree holds him by the collar-ring, so that when his head cracks to one side his body can't follow it. The painful jolt is as much a reminder of his place as his current position – bent over his boots, stripping himself down so that he can be packed into Peter's cage.

“Nothing belongs to him,” the Kree says, helping relieve Yondu of his underjacket. “Not what he wears. Not his body. Nothing.”

He has to lift his arms to let it slide away. He dithers a fraction too long, elbows caught in the holes. Despite everything, despite being willing to give up his freedom and his future for the idiot kid who'd betrayed him, Yondu still doesn't want them to see. Hell, given the choice he'd let no one but the sexbots who service him at whoring stations lay their soulless sculpted optics on his skin. Maybe Kraglin, at a push. But as the Kree's so kindly reminded him, he ain't allowed simple privileges like _privacy_ anymore.

On cue, the Kree loses patience. He gathers two handfuls and _wrenches_. The worn leather, which has accompanied Yondu through his stint with Stakar's band, through mutinies and riots, through battles lost and won, shreds apart at the seams.

His back's an ugly thing. A mass of whip-scars disrupted only by brands in the shape of Kree coats of arms. Those mark the insignia of every family who had him fight for their entertainment or wage war for their glory: etched mementos on his flesh.

The heads of three of those families are dead by his hand, hence the scale of his bounty.

Greenie's sharp inhale is almost as loud as Drax's. “Are you a warrior of my clan?”

“No, Drax,” Greenie says. She sounds mighty strangled, for someone who ain't had a collar fastened round her pretty throat. Yondu's head is still ducked, so he can't scoff at her – wouldn't anyway, for threat of another slap. “No, he isn't. Those scars... Yondu...”

Silencing her mid-plea, or order, or whatever else she meant to issue to the old Centaurian standing before his master in threadbare boxer shorts, the Kree snaps his fingers. Peter's cage releases. It only takes him a moment to find his feet. Youngsters.

The cage is what Yondu's dreading, truth be told. More than the rebranding, more than whatever comes next. Sleeping in one hadn't been fun as a kid, but at least back then he could unfold come morning without too much hassle. Nowadays, he doesn't bounce back into shape the way he used to. He'll be lucky if he can walk after this, let alone anything more strenuous.

Good thing this is one ordeal he won't be surviving, otherwise he might care about that.

Peter, unfortunately, has other ideas. He shakes out his limbs until the pins and needles disperse. Then, despite Yondu's warning glare, he charges.

“Get the hell away from him!”

He looks all kinds of ridiculous. His nudity ain't disguised by the ginger-brown hair that sprouts over every body part that's bald for Yondu. He's flapping about like an uncooked sausage on a trampoline. But there's wrath in his eyes, and that has powered many a weaker man to a greater victory. He swings at the Kree with a holler that rivals Yondu's best...

...And crumples, slow as a toppling column, eyes tracking to the dart that sticks from his neck.

“Oh -”

“Peter!” That's Greenie, rushing forwards with sword at the ready. Drax is only a step behind, yanking knives from the holsters in his boots.

“Calm down!” snaps the Kree. He might not have a free hand for a weapon, one being tucked in Yondu's collar while the other tugs the waistband of his underwear, ready to complete the ritual stripping and reduce him to the nothing he is. But the soldiers who've accompanied him are bristling with necroblasters – too many even for Greenie to plow through before at least one stray shot clips her companions. The woman who'd sniped Quill keeps her rifle raised, squinting along its sights, next dart already loaded. “It's a tranquilizer. We use it to sedate our slaves when they're agitated.”

He sneers at Peter's slack-jawed puddle of muscle. His blue eyes are rolled up into his head. He looks all kinds of dead – but when Yondu checks his chest he finds, true to the Kree's word, that it's rising and falling.

“Take your Terran, Guardians. And do not let us catch you attempting to steal Hala's interior blueprints again. We will not be so merciful next time. Plus...” He rattles the collar, and Yondu with it. “You no longer have a bargaining chip.”

Drax drags Quill to safety. “While I condone your discarding of a shirt, I must admit that the sight of you without pants makes me want to regurgitate my breakfast.”

“He can't hear you,” Greenie growls. Her stance is steady, not a single tremble despite the longsword she's holding out perpendicular. “What are you going to do with him?”

“Oh, he's free to go.” The Kree shrugs. “I suspect that having spent three days in our serving-slave pen will act as a deterrent against future crimes.”

Greenie angles her gaze at Yondu. He stares only at his feet, stomaching the hook of the Kree's thumb in his waistband with the dullest passivity he can muster. The nail presses against his hip. It's a foreign presence, like a splinter under the skin. A blue that ain't his own. “No. I meant, what about him?”

The Kree plucks at the cotton, revealing another inch of grubby thigh. “I hope you aren't planning to renege on our deal?”

“I just want to know what you're going to do to him.” Greenie wets her lips. “So that I can give his son closure.”

 _Son_. There she goes, spouting nonsense again. And Yondu thought she was the smart one! Must be all those hair follicles, dragging on her brain. Yondu laughs. Then wheezes to clear the blood from his airways as the Kree backhands him, his armored wristpiece crunching nasal cartilage to one side. Navy drips, splattering the collar's garish yellow.

“Shut up. As for you, girl? I don't see why you care.”

Neither does Yondu. But Greenie's just as stubborn as Quill – she's not going to let a little thing like logic stop her. “Don't call me girl,” she says. Her eyes thin to sharp green sickles and her blade angles into the light of the Kree system's captive star. In that moment, despite her disowning, she is every bit the Titan's daughter.

The Kree holds her gaze for five whole seconds, over Yondu's bowed head. But he isn't brave – or foolish enough – to go toe-to-toe with a child of Thanos, even with the support of every garrison on Hala. He relents with a scoff, twanging the loose elastic of Yondu's underwear.

“Milady, I don't know how familiar you are with Kree slaving categories. He is too old to be a laborer, and wouldn't be of use on the frontlines without his arrow. He is to become a serving slave with the Hundred and Twenty-First Division. The property of the soldiers.”

Greenie's scowl crinkles between metal bone-implants. “Your Infantry men have a reputation for breaking their toys.”

“It matters little. So long as they don't make it fast or painless, the Accusers will be satisfied.” With that, the Kree dismisses them all: from Gamora, sword twinkling under the light of a thousand colonized asteroids, and Drax, lugging his load of limp pink Terran, to the _Milano_ high above. He tugs Yondu along by the collar-hoop, pausing once they reach his cage. “Remove your garment, slave. Guardians, you are welcome to his leathers in exchange for our destruction of your leader's. But...” He sniffs the air over Yondu's shoulder. Recoils. “I would recommend eradicating these with fire.”

Yondu rolls the holey fabric down his hips. He kicks it off one leg at a time. He ain't shy. Battle slaves are paraded naked, so potential buyers can prod and poke at their musculature. Same with the fuck-slaves and the laborers. Once you've been ogled by a hundred eyes you've been ogled by a billion, and he cares no less about those of Quill's lil' gang than about the entirety of the Kree army.

But he's still grateful that the Kree tranqed Quill. He doesn't want the boy's last memory of him to be this: his old mentor, every scar on show, crawling into a cage that shrinks to fit him.

Once the resizing is complete, the bars unfold. They widen until the gaps between them are filled. Total isolation.

Yondu's immersed in a lightless box. Air can circulate, but nothing else. He kneels in darkness, immobilized but for the expansion and contraction of his chest. His implant scrapes the front wall while his feet, tucked close under his folded legs, wedge against the rear one. His spine's already protesting. But it's only gonna get worse from here on out, so he might as well suck it up and resign himself to slipped discs and permanent cramp.

The Kree lifts his cage-turned-carrying-crate with a grunt. He'd needed help to haul Quill about, but Yondu's a smaller occupant. He can sling the box onto his back solo. Yondu bites down on his gag as he's bashed about by the sudden shift in gravity, elbows clonking. The Kree has manipulated the nature of the forcefield, so it's just as solid to outsiders as to the man within. Only one person can retrieve Yondu from this tiny tomb, which is already overheating from the closeness of his curled body - and that's the man who put him here.

Sound is muffled. There's nothing to inform him of what's going on or where he is, or what final banter the Kree and the Guardians might be exchanging. Only the rasp of his breathing, thick and wet through the blood in his nostrils, and the calm throb of his heart, and the cadence of the Kree's footsteps, as he turns and walks away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **I know it's a Mood Whiplash but writing this made me imagine Yondu being put in a cat-crate and taken to the vets**


	12. In which Peter plots

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **General horrible-Yondu-whump warning, plus a few mentions of rape on the side. A touch of graphic gore too. Be ye warned.**

When you're sold into slavery, there ain't no set limits on the Bad Shit that can happen.

Assault, rape, torture, abuse... In the Xandarian Empire, all these crimes come with individual titles and a pre-packaged jail sentence. But none have any real distinction when you’ve been raised to expect them. You start with a blank slate, and the only markings scrawled upon it are those which serve to remind you of your lacking worth: your brands, your bruises, the slices from the whip. You don’t have a sense of shame, because it has never been nurtured within you. You don't have any concept of the self, because you belong to others. You don't know what 'pride' means, because tools don't require pride to function.

There's no point hoping that today might be a little less hellish than yesterday or tomorrow. There's certainly no point hoping for freedom, not when you don't know what that word means.

Yondu has sampled those waters. He knows how sweet they can be, how addictive. When Stakar broke his collar, he'd drunk freedom until he was glutted on it, and damn near drowned himself - and, more importantly, Quill - in the process. And now, dragged back to dry land after floundering through poor choice after poor choice, bad decision after worse one, the collar has an allure to it, like grease to flies.

No more fuck-ups. No more failures. No more hurting Peter.

It’s that sort of shit most folks don’t get. How could they? Yondu never knew a life before the slave pens. He's well aware that slavery doesn't break you. It _builds_. It constructs its children from the bottom up, bit by bit, like limescale collecting around the spout of a tap. It fills that void within you. It  _becomes_ you, because the very concept of a 'you' is weaned on the knowledge that you are property.

And sure, after a while - after decades - Yondu considers himself high-functioning for an ex-Kree slave. Nevertheless, sometimes he wants to slam Quill and Kraglin’s heads together. They didn't grow up with much, but at least they always kept their autonomy. Whether they were deciding to ignore a dying mother's hand, or scoping potential marks to pickpocket, those choices were their own, and while there were often consequences, each decision was freely made.

Quill’s new friends seem to understand. Greenie and the furry thing gravitated towards him on the journey over (although Greenie treated him like he ought to be under an interrogation lamp, and the Rat hid that innate sense of camaraderie behind spits and snarls, as if he was embarrassed, or perhaps just afraid that Yondu could sense him as easily). He recognizes the hardness that you dig into, which in turn can never quite be escaped. The sort of hardness he never wanted the Terran brat to know.

He wonders what he might have said to his boy, if he'd had the chance.

_Well done, idjit. Ya done got yerself caught, and expected me to bail yer dumb ass out, as usual._

Nah. Brat'd only blame himself. Which, in all fairness, he deserves. But Quill's of a weepy disposition. If he starts snuffling over Yondu's scarred blue hide (more scarred than ever, as the branding iron unpeels from his shoulder, releasing a waft of juicy meat-stink) he'll be worse than useless.

Luckily, he’s got his team. They’ll help him move on. And in time, it’ll be as if Yondu never was. All that will remain are those dirty leathers and a sour memory, one which Quill might suck on when he’s feeling vindictive, secure in the knowledge his old captor got his comeuppance.

It's the smell which makes Yondu gag, more than the pain. He forces the nausea down, battling acid back through his esophagus. He spits up, he's only gonna choke on it. Nothing tastes good the second time – even if what's in his stomach is the last non-intravenously injected foodstuff he will ever eat.

They ain't gonna take the gag out. The man tattooing Yondu's crime over his lower back and legs, the only parts that aren't twisted by old lash-scars, had taken one look and proclaimed him a biter.

Someone thinks he's capable of being a threat. Despite the stipple of the tattoo pen and the agony in his shoulder, which concentrates around the blazing shape of the infantry brand, Yondu laughs to himself. Seems his reputation has preceded him. The sniggers fade when the Kree who'd unboxed him – a different man to the first, although Yondu suspects they'll meld together soon, differentiated only by how much they like to hurt – strokes his jaw. His knuckles brush where his collar has been bolted to the table.

“We could always remove his teeth,” he muses, as if they're not having this conversation over the glossy burn on Yondu's back. “His arrow is out of range. Plus, it would prevent accidental slices.”

 _Accidental slices on what_ , Quill might've asked. Yondu, ankles flexing in the straps which hold him spread-eagled on the operation table, has no such precious naivete. There are similar brands hovering above his bare feet, ready to hobble him until he's so broken in that he won't consider running.

“I'll consult with the soldiers,” decides the slavekeeper. “Those teeth belongs to them. They decide whether or not he keeps them.”

He pulls the lever. The pads, kept red-hot by coils of superheated plasma, meet Yondu's soles like the top stamper on a waffle iron.

His mouth falls open. The belt bites his tongue and cheeks as he twitches and jigs, pain playing him like a puppet.

The slavekeeper leaves the brands clamped in place while he finishes his tattoos. They remain locked until the smell of char makes all of their eyes water – or at least, that's Yondu's excuse. When he eases them up, they peel away layers of skin, leaving a bubble of cauterized flesh over each heel in the shape of a Kree warhammer.

“Welcome to the infantry division,” he says, patting Yondu over his seeping back-blister. Yondu doesn't give him the satisfaction of screaming.

  

* * *

  

“Why're we still in orbit?”

Gamora's shoulder is cybernetically enhanced. Logic dictates that Quill's puny Terran strength shouldn't be able to put a dent in it. But for some reason, the internal plates strain on the cusp of buckling. Gamora elbows him away when warning sensors flash on the insides of her eyelids.

“You can't just walk onto Hala,” she says quietly, engrossing herself with a passing hail of meteorites as they fizzle to dust across their shields. They’re primed to make their first jump, nav-charts calibrated for Xandar - but nobody wants to be first to gun the throttle. “It's miraculous that you got close enough to be caught in the first place. Especially since we all warned you what a stupid idea it was. Going after the Hala blueprints - Peter, what were you thinking?”

“Yeah, yeah. You told me so. And I got captured, and flarking _Yondu_ had to come and rescue me, like he always fucking does.” The fury in Quill's eyes is mostly self-directed. He masks it under harsh words, scowling at her reflection in the glass. “You forced him.”

“'Forced' had nothin' to do with it,” Rocket mutters. He's polishing Groot's pot, perched on the table. His hind paws kick a meter off the ground. The _Milano_ had been kept out-of-atmosphere during the exchange, and Rocket had stayed at her helm. But at Peter's mention of a cage and a collar, all his snide digs at Yondu subsided. Now, whenever Peter brings up this topic – which he does at every available opportunity, out of some sadistic need to make them understand the gravity of what they've done – his furry shoulders shrink and he hunches like he wants to disappear. Why, if Peter didn't know the little shit, he'd think he felt guilty. “He let us win.”

“Like that makes it any better! Just because he – he _wanted_ this -” Saying so makes all of them queasy. Gamora swallows hard and looks away, because she knows there's a difference between _wanting_ and _conditioning_ , and while the two are hard to discern from an interior perspective, to outsiders they're painfully obvious. “It doesn't make this right. Guys, we gotta go back.”

Drax shakes his head. “I would gladly die besides you in battle, Quill. But as it would achieve nothing, it seems pointless. We cannot storm a Kree fortress – let alone one that resides within their native star system. Not unless you desire to declare war on an entire race.” He sounds a touch hopeful at the prospect, although he schools his expression when Gamora smacks his leg.

Quill presses a clenched hand to his mouth. It's such a Terran gesture – lashes trembling shut, the leather of Yondu's coat straining over his biceps and broad back. His teeth dig into his knucklebones. Then gradually, as his crew watch in trepidation, unsure how to handle this rampant flaunting of sentiment, he pulls his fist away to reveal a grin.

“Peter?” Gamora asks, tentative. “Peter, what are you planning?”

Yondu's pants are too small. Rather than shredding them over his quadriceps, Peter has opted to fold the coat around him, bundling himself up in a parody of modesty. At Gamora's words, he stalks to the comm-deck on the far side of the cockpit – and hastily closes the trenchcoat when Drax mimes puking.

“If we can't save him ourselves,” he says, dialling a familiar callsign. His commlink flashes with Kraglin's latest mugshot: lead-toothed lour, stubble, sullen blue eyes. “Then I suggest we get help.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This chapter's pretty brutal - and yeah, it was absolutely Mad Max-inspired. I'm considering putting the rating up. There's no explicit sexual content in this fic, and I know people can get pissy about things being labelled Mature for violence. But at the same time, I'm iffy about tagging this as suitable for Teen audiences.... Thoughts?**


	13. In which Yondu crawls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **This chapter contains mentions of rape/noncon, and physical abuse. Nothing explicit. **...But I wield that whump mallet _hard._****
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He keeps his teeth.

Apparently they're an integral part of his image, which has grinned out from bounty books across the empire for decades. This is about humiliating the man in those posters, who smirks like there’s still something left of him to break. Yondu’s teeth are too important to be plucked out just so that a few randy soldiers might use his mouth without the threat of scraping. 

But it's a close call, and the gag stays – for now.

 

 

 

* * *

 

The battle slaves - men and women and boys and girls, purchased from the inner-city gladiatorial rings - live and die on the scorched plains of war. They don't rank as highly as the Kree soldiers. Serving slaves come nowhere near.

Yondu's new life (or just his life; the years between these two halves were nothing more than a vacation) is one of drudgery and toil. He's expected to clean and polish, to serve food and drink, to launder uniforms and prep weapons, and to provide disposable stress relief for the infantrymen, whenever and however it's required. Having a readily-available selection of bodies to abuse stops the purebloods from butchering each other. It gives them an outlet, a target upon which to expend leftover energy from the berserker-mode they enter as they colonize yet another world.

Anyway, slaves are less hassle to replace than harlots. No one cares if the odd one redecorates the mess hall.

Yondu can't walk, not with his ruined feet. He crawls. Sometimes he doesn't crawl fast enough, but a boot's always there to provide assistance. After being crated every night so the cage digs into his brands, it's not like he could force his spine straight anyway.

Those brands are finally scabbing over. Their smell lingers – an olfactory amalgamation of pus and cooked flesh, blended with the antiseptic gel he's daubed with every morning to stop an infection killing him before the infantry get their chance.

The barracks are surprisingly spacious and cool on the inside. They're kept meticulously clean, and most of Yondu's days are dedicated to banishing all traces of sand, which dances across the asteroid in gritty cumulonimbi and whirling dust-devils. While Yondu spends a helluva lot of time on his knees, his belt remains tied round his face, and instead of being presented with crotchpieces, he's armed with a dustpan, a brush, and a miniature vacuum/matter-compactor that crushes whatever he siphons up into specks of diamond.

Those specks are shiny, but worthless. The Yondu of three days ago, who could saunter into any marketplace in the known systems and trot back out again five minutes later with pockets stuffed to overflowing and a bank account whose balance had, however implausibly, increased, might have been tempted to steal a palmful. But there ain't nowhere to stash 'em. Even if he manages to smuggle those bright firefly-dots back to his crate, the cages are emptied of their occupants and hose-blasted every second night, and if a slave is suspected of thievery, they're subjected to the full snapped-on-rubber-glove experience. 

If they're found guilty, it only gets worse. No amount of shinies are worth that.

And so he keeps his head low – not that this lets him fade into the background. The ruby wedge of his implant quickly becomes a target for any soldier with spare food on their plate and good aim. Yondu bears the splatters and the jeers without so much as a twitch. He scurries out of folks' way, he doesn't look anyone in the eye, and he crams as much information about his surrounds into his brain as will fit.

The jagged shape of the turrets, designed to intimidate, cedes to more practical architecture within. Those spires prong deep into the bedrock: five central shafts around which a winding staircase of halls, dormitories, assembly rooms, strategy chambers, and simulation holodecks climb. The slave quarters are lowest of the low. They're situated far beneath the asteroid's surface, where the air is soupy and the artificial gravity occasionally undergoes a spasm, which crushes everyone too feeble to keep their feet belly-down on the floor. Soldiers travel by elevator, but the slaves have their own mechanisms. These are more akin to dumb-waiters. Each is sized a little larger than the cages they're stowed in overnight.

This ain't without reason. Should a slave be logged out, their entire crate can be packed off through a zigzagging network of pneumatic tubes, until they arrive at the quarters of whoever has requested them.

But in the interim, during transit, those little lifts are all the peace a slave knows. They provide a minute of privacy, a scrounged second where a brutalized body can relax and know that it's safe. Ephemeral, of course, but treasured nevertheless.

Occasionally, the collared exchange warnings – _incoming slavekeeper,_ and the like. They communicate via a half-mimed vernacular of wall-knocks and fast, furtive flutters of hands. It's simple enough that most of the disparate species the Kree conquers can pick it up – and indeed, it doesn't take more than a few days of quiet observation for Yondu to get the gist. But he doesn't expect any help from his fellow indentured. They might not have access to intergalactic news networks or the Xandarian infoweb, but gossip spreads faster than fire in an oxygen tank here, even among those who are whipped if they're ever caught chattering.

They know who he is. And, judging by the way they scuttle away from him, ain't none of them willing to stick out their neck so that his last weeks in this galaxy might pass gently.

Yondu can't blame 'em. He'd do the same, in their position.

And so, he looks out for himself. He memorizes the layout, concentrating on his main ports – the galley, the janitorial hold, the slave bay – as well as a few convenient hidey-holes that he locates along the way. Nothing spectacular. Just little irregularities in the wall, alcoves where a slave might duck if a rowdy troop pass.

It should be disturbing, how easy it is to fall back into these rhythms. But Yondu, shuffling from breezy, spacious atrium to breezy, spacious atrium, stripping sheets from soldiers' beds and buffing endless miles of chrome from the skids and scuffs left by their boots, is only grateful he hasn't forgotten.

The pain is near-constant. Not just from his brands, the texture of which is more granular than glistening by now. His knees and shins are sliced, from where he has to creep across the sharp edges of the doorway panels that separate each communal room from the next. The inside of his elbow is a blotchy lump of bruises, so swollen he can’t bend the arm. An IV-line is jabbed into him for an hour a night, pushed through the forcefield of his cage, then roughly yanked loose again. It provides just enough nutrients to keep him alive, but the ache in his empty belly is less of an occasional pang and more a gnaw. Even his crawl limps.

But all in all, it ain't as bad as he'd expected. Things rarely are. His imagination has a long and chequered past to draw on, and reality couldn't hope to match up to the depravities his mind can muster. Especially since there are so few soldiers around.

The Kree are waging a campaign on the other side of the quadrant, subjugating yet another savage species. The battalion stationed at these barracks have left only a token home guard. Of those that remain, there are fewer who have any interest in scarred and blue, not when there's younger models in more tropical colors on offer. Yondu's been smacked, he's been starved and branded and spat on, and he's had more than one slavekeeper haul him up by the collar, wobbling about on his toes to spare his burnt heels, so they can read his spiky Kree-script tattoos. But his cage has yet to be delivered to a soldier's bunk room, during the hours that align to Hala’s night.

Those tattoos – _crime: three counts of murder of a pureblood, from the noble lines of Vahi, Girill, and Kirz; punishment: slow death_ – speak for themselves. It's a small mercy that he has yet to be accosted by anyone from those families, which he deprived of their patriarchs back when Stakar first snipped his chains - although it's coming, and of that, Yondu is certain.

 

 

 

* * *

 

Stripped of his old clothes, Yondu's bundled into new ones. His outfit ain't flattering: a shapeless, sleeveless bag that reaches a generous mid-thigh and prickles over every scar, old and new.  The cheap-spun fiber, a synthesized wool, absorbs sweat and blood in a way his leathers never did. By the end of the first week it's squishing. By the second, it smells about as putrid as he does.

A young soldier catches him as he's skulking round the mess hall with a tray, collecting empty glasses. He carries him to the washracks when Yondu's attempts to crawl there are deemed too pathetic, and blasts him with cold water until he can't smell himself no more. When he starts removing his armor, Yondu lets his eyes go vacant and relaxes, best he can through his shivers.

Hey. It was only a matter of time.

The Kree scoffs and kicks his legs closed. He heats the spray – no sense wasting hot water on slaves, even if that water's warmed by aid of natural geological processes and sustainable high-efficiency solar converters. He steps beneath it, and pointedly turns his back.

Rivulets gloss the crisp cut of his muscles. Yondu watches him cup the water, lift it, upend it over the bald blue dome of his head. It's the same way he'd look at a statue he had no plans on stealing: with a vague awareness of aesthetics, but no interest. The Kree's a spry thing, tall in the way of his species, and effortlessly masculine. He's also decently hung, which makes his implicit dismissal a relief.

Fuck-slaves ain't common in barracks. That type tend towards the exotic, and thus the expensive. They can usually be found in the households of high-ranking generals and politicians - Accusers, and the like. 

The infantry, in contrast, will wet their dicks in whatever's at hand. But there ain't no sense fucking an old blue ass when other serving-slaves rock pert tits and wet cunnies. Kree boy ain’t looking to screw him. In fact, right now Kree boy is comparing the legend of Yondu Udonta to the man slumped at his feet. He's scrolling through every story, every rumor and whisper and myth that layered up around him, hardening under pressure like metamorphic rock. And he's finding them lacking.

Yondu receives nothing but contempt from him – contempt and a shiner when he doesn't scramble from the shower fast enough, brands blazing as his feet skid on slippery tile.

Kid's like Quill, in a way. He's young. He's lucky. He ain't never been in a situation where he's had to abandon his pride to survive. Only now that survival ain't on Yondu's to-do list, it's not so much that he's swallowing that sense of self-worth, which Stakar ordered him to grow thirty-odd years back. Rather, his pride has devolved to apathy, along with every other thing in his head.

Sentiment makes you weak. So in a way, muses Yondu as the barracks gates flood open on the first day of the third week, and he's hoisted onto the laps of a gaggle of celebrating soldiers too drunk to care about his grizzled mug, right now he must be the strongest he's ever been, because he can't feel anything.


	14. In which there is a party

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **CW: more awful, horrible Yondu-whump, some very lightly insinuated rape**

He hurts. But that's nothing new.

The mess hall has undergone a dramatic atmospheric shift as the divisions congregate, from crisp and cool to muggy. The air is dense. It's so humid that the scents borne upon it (meaty gravy, booze, blood, sex) are tasted more than they're smelled, rolling across Yondu's face like lukewarm tongues.

He's designed for rainforest travel. He can already feel his pores opening. They welcome the moisture, after spending so long immersed in filtered, arid air. But there ain't nothing pleasant about it. Or if there is, it's such a small reprieve that it doesn't register.

The usual harsh lighting has been replaced with darkness, split only by strobes. The atonal clashes of war anthems blare like techno music in a club, and highlights from the battle, collected by the infantry Holo-Chronicler, gush overhead in a three-dimensional firework display of swung hammers and eviscerated, screaming civilians.

It's a party, alright. And a rowdy one. Any pretence at civility has disintegrated. The soldiers did the whole wining and dining shtick earlier - they'd been treated to a feast upon their re-entry to the barracks, where each laden platter was borne on the back of a stooped or crawling slave.

Yondu had been among that number. He'd lagged at the rear of the servers, a tray chained to his collar at one end and mag-locked to a belt at the other, bearing a tureen of slopping, scalding broth. Whatever poor sod had been diced into it, they smelt wonderful: gamey and pungent, rich as the heart-meat of a bilgesnipe. Whenever Yondu wobbled, a fresh splash soaked his smock. It made his mouth water, drool puddling on either side of the belt, as his stomach panged hard enough that his shaking hands threatened to skid from under him.

It's a classic metaphor, bandying food in front of a starving man. But Yondu had never understood its significance. Not until then, as his vision fuzzed and his head spun, hunger a clawing dragon in his belly, saliva slicking his stretched lips as he forced himself to place one hand in front of the other, one knee in front of the next.

But now the tray is gone, he longs for its return. At the very least, it had hidden his implant.

Yondu drags himself along the floor. He bites down on the gag every time a sound threatens to squeak around it. His fingers hurt, from being stomped on. His abdomen hurts, from being kicked. He doesn't let himself assess pain situated lower than that. It's as he's creeping for the edge of the room that his gaze catches that unmistakable duple-glint: a pair of eyes, watching him.

That's odd. Ain't no Kree small enough to be on his level. Even the shortest of their men top six foot, and the women don't lag far behind.

He squints. The bruising around his cheekbones, from where a Kree had cracked his nose on the tabletop – bellowing with laughter as he struggled to snort air through the blood – makes it difficult to peer into the dark. But he makes out the curve of a bare calf, peeping from under a smock much like his.

It's another slave. She's huddled under a table, shiver-sweating like she's got a fever. She cranes away from the boots of the Kree above, who laugh and belch and relay the tales of their kills.

Poor kid. Must be a new conquest, from the latest dominion. She ain't gonna survive the week.

But just because she's as good as dead, that doesn't mean Yondu's gonna help her on her way. He isn't cruel enough to compromise her hiding place, pitiful though it is. He angles away, tucking small like he's in his night-cage, and skulks through the dark patches cast by the benches and chairs, which he spent this morning polishing. The physical memory of that labor pulls on his shoulder muscles. The tendons feel like rubber. Another hurt for the collection.

Of course, by now all his hard work has been undone. Warrior-class Kree are as crude and raucous as their Nobles aloof – at least, when they're not on parade, lined up for inspection before the Accusers. Why, if they were in reds, Yondu could mistake 'em for Ravagers.

Only Ravagers never keep slaves. Not on Stakar's watch; not on Yondu's. There's a lot of things he and his old cap'n disagreed on, back in the day – the Ego fiasco being the tip of the asteroid. But this ain't one of them.

He sets his sights on the door at the hall's far end. It's locked to all but the soldiers, some of whom have already selected slaves to log out, and retreated to the relative privacy of their dorms. Ain't no hope of escape that way. Not if he wants to leave alone.

But at the very least, there's shadows. Maybe – just maybe – they're deep enough to hide his implant.

First, he's got to get there. Yondu slithers on spilled drinks. More slosh nearby, splattering his back and head. Booze saturates his smock like a sponge. It’s fancy stuff, compared to the boot-brewed swill preferred by his crew. (His old crew, he should say. They've given him up for dead; he figures he should return the courtesy.) But it reeks of alcohol, and it’s _sticky_.

Not for the first time, Yondu thanks the stars that every soldier, battle slave, and server is treated to a thorough decontamination bath after returning from the fields of war. It ensures no foreign species invade the ecosystem (not that a desertified asteroid has one of those). As a result, insects have yet to populate this remote rock.  Now, Yondu's used to lice. Ain't nothing wrong with the odd bed-bug. He doesn't boast enough body hair to make 'em a pest (unlike Kraglin, who has to be de-flea'd yearly in livestock-dip, whether he consents to the dunking or otherwise). But with the amount of open sores Yondu is currently rocking, were he anywhere less sterile, he’d be lodging larvae.

Another glass is upended over his head. So much for the Kree-kid's efforts to clean him. He can’t lick at the booze with the belt between his teeth, although trickles slide down the insides of the leather - the first thing he’s tasted for weeks besides his own stale breath. Yondu scurries away before the tipsy infantryman can glance down and spot the recipient of his golden shower (thankfully, that hue is due to the hops in the beer, rather than the concentration of his urine). He doesn't make it far.

Fingers hook his collar. They haul him up, like a cub bitten by the scruff. He dangles, choking, shins scraping the ground and branded heels aching from the thought of taking his weight. His windpipe's concaved, and the Kree lets him sputter and cough before hoisting him to drop him on the table.

“Hey, Kirz! Look what I found!”

Light. Danger.

He's exposed. Nowhere to hide, nowhere to run to – if he tries, they'll only catch him. There's nothing soldiers love more than a hunt.

He's on level with the seated Kree, although he shrinks on the chrome, hunched as if that'll make him invisible. There's laughter, mocking pats, hands under his smock and raps of his implant. A palm tips his head up. It smacks him until he focuses on the man in front of him, strobes highlighting his smirk in intermittent flashes of blue, whilst another checks his tattoos.

“It's him alright,” he says. “Noble lines of Vahi, Girill, and Kirz. Says so right here.”

Yondu doesn't look back at the shaking slave girl, squashed under a table two rows down. He's spun to face the Kree behind him, so he stares at them instead. There's a pair of 'em. They're higher-ranking than the rabble, judging by the pins on their lapels and their relative sobriety. The male stirs his drink lazily, one arm draped around the Kree-woman next to him.

Ain't no use appealing to her for pity. Because there, pinned over her ranking stripes, is the Hammer of the Kirz clan - the same one that's stamped on Yondu's spine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Oh dear.**


	15. In which things get worse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **I don't want to spoil anything, so I'm only gonna say: don't read if gore squicks you out.**

It's the first night he doesn't make it back to the slave hall. His cage goes empty, suspended silently amid stuffed boxes, which rock hammock-like in time with their occupants' snores. There'll be punishment waiting in the morning, as Yondu doubts the Kirz and her boyfriend will have logged him as Out On Service. He can't bring himself to care.

He hasn't moved from where they left him. They had carried him so far from the main celebration that Yondu assumed they were either aiming for their quarters or to a place where body disposal would be more convenient – like the galley furnaces or the sewage processing unit, which houses enough assorted cleaning solvents to dissolve him to the roots of his metal teeth. But they'd stopped off in a corridor, seemingly at random, then pulled a waste chute from the wall and held him over it while they did what they wanted, so it caught the worst of the mess.

That stink – hot garbage, compost, disinfectant – sticks in his nostrils. Luckily, the reek of his blood overpowers it.

And so, he sits. He doesn't know how many hours pass. The asteroid has been calibrated to rotate at a counterpoint to Hala, so that their active side is always facing the sun. It's a bisected world: one side light, the other dark, one side roasting while the other is craggy with comet-ice. Yondu has no way of gauging the time – the lights above remain crisp and bright and unguttering. They're unkind to the skin, picking out every scar through the shreds of his smock.

He considers finding somewhere small and dark to curl up in, to mimic the comparable safety of his cage. Then decides it's too much effort. Best make the most of this peace while it lasts.

That's not for long. There's footsteps. They tramp on by. Yondu can't be bothered to look up, and would only get kicked for it anyway if he was caught staring. His ears register those footsteps as they dwindle, then stop completely. The only reason he doesn't cringe as the Infantryman marches towards him again is because he knows it ain't gonna make much difference.

The Kirz chick's boyfriend, come for another round? Another vengeful descendent? A stranger, intrigued by the prospect of a fallen Ravager captain, and eager for a chance to test his pain thresholds?

Fingers tip his chin. The man – boy, really – who'd lugged him to the shower three nights ago, sighs at the dripping hollow of his eyesocket. He dithers a moment. Checks all around, both directions. Then hauls him up under the armpits, lifting him from his crumple with disgusting ease.

Yondu's tossed over his shoulders for the duration of the stomp to the medbay, thinning wrists caught in one blue hand. Once there, the Kree grabs a cotton pad and pours out a generous dram of antiseptic.

“Press this on,” he says, motioning at the new hole in Yondu's face. Blue blood coats one cheek, thick with clots. It's already drying; it cracks like mud under sunlight when Yondu sniffs the pad and pulls a face at the ascorbic tang. He inclines his head in silent thanks. Kree-boy amends himself with a sneer, which looks about as practised as it's confident. “I've seen your tattoos. Infection is too kind an end.”

He obviously hasn't encountered any space parasites, which burrow through raw wounds and infect your soft tissues with spores and wriggling maggots until they're all that's left. Infection's one of the nastier ways to go. But if he's being merciful, Yondu ain't gonna call him out on it.

He does as he's told – and bites the belt to stop the instinctual yelp. It burns like someone's upended acid on his face. When Yondu peels the pad off, he expects to find it glistening with melted skin.

But there's only blood and goo, and a membraneous strip that was probably a cornea, once upon a time.

The Kree shudders. He turns away, waving for Yondu to wad up the pad and toss it into another waste chute, which emerges from the wall and returns with a hiss of sealing rubber.

Kiddo doesn't have a family insignia on his chest. That's the sign of a newly-whetted soldier, who has yet to be deployed. If he's too squeamish to handle a bit of eyegore, he's made a poor career choice. Yondu can't tell him so though, not with the belt champed tight in his jaws. He stays quiet and placid as he's hoisted again, carried towards the shower for his second sluicing of the week.

He kneels there, watching the water spiral into the plughole. Its clearness is muddied by his blood; strings of impurity that dilute as they plop off his cheeks and run down the insides of his legs, staining the water blue.

 

* * *

 

Punishment's a whipping. They take the gag out because they want to hear him scream. They don't stop until they're satisfied.

 

* * *

 

He's packed into his cage that night, fitting with pain as his flayed shoulders rub the bars. Broken skin leaves a slick stripe of blue. It crumbles as it dries, an abrasion that rubs him rawer whenever his chest flexes around a gasp. Fresh blood runs out to join the rotting old.

The slavekeepers are more well-versed in torture than the young soldier – although he'll learn in time, if he follows the examples set by his compatriots. They don't offer gauze, or salve, or even an upended bucket. By the third morning, when they finally pry him out – then lose patience, and tip his box so he falls – Yondu's too weak to move.

He's drippy with fever and he can't stop shivering. But on the plus side, he can't feel his back anymore.

He thinks of the terrified girl under the table. There's empty cages scattered through the hall, he can only assume the worst. Seems a week was too generous.

Once the last of the late-risers has been extracted, those deserted cages are sprayed down with power hoses, batting and clacking together like windchimes from the force of the spout. They're left dripping but clean, and Yondu knows it won't be long before they're refilled.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **hey at least he looks like a proper pirate now!**


	16. In which Yondu is left behind

The infantry ship out to their next conquest tomorrow. Yondu is due to join them.

There are four types of slave. In the Kree language – this being the first language Yondu ever learned, as he didn’t spend long enough under his parents' tender stewardship to pick up more than instinctual clicks for _pain_ and _help –_ these four categories are known as _Ixcava, Zabha, Inturio,_ and _Skal._ Everyone but the noble class and the reigning Accusers call the slaves by cruder monikers, however. The color of the collar around your neck designates you as a red Fighter, a green Fucker, a grey Laborer or a yellow Server.

Without his arrow, Yondu ain't strong enough to be the first, and he ain't burly enough for the third. Warmongers always need battle fodder, but a quick death ain't what the Accusers have ordained. They want him to die reduced and humiliated, which would infer that he ought to spend his last months being fucked into stupors. But despite his confidence in his own allure, the Kree don't seem to find him attractive enough to keep chained to a bed – their loss. That only leaves one option.

A serving slave. A creature to be seen but not heard, kept caged at night and charged with sweeping, cleaning, food preparation, and other such fun past-times. They can be used and abused at their masters' discretion, in any fashion or form, and they're mulched into protein shakes to feed their successors after they die, to save the hassle of burning them and ejecting their ashes into space.

In contrast, a battle slave will go where they're sent and march until they drop. They get a portion of food for every ten severed scalps they bring back. Hunger and fear do the rest. 

The frontliners are whichever battle slaves return with any sense of regularity. They lead the troop, shouting orders, relishing the chance to command rather than bow their heads to others. They're afforded privileges for good behavior, unlike Yondu's kind who only know temporary reliefs from the pressure of survival. They eat first after the Infantry have been served, and they even have a separate dormitory. It's cramped and smelly, but they sleep in cots rather than cages.

They can trade scalps for amenities that the serving slaves only dream of. Clothes they pretend they 'own'. Loofahs. Lice treatment. Even the occasional trinket. Nothing big, nothing flashy – just dribs and drabs, none worth more than bronze unit-chits, but all priceless to men and women to whom the concept of _possessions_ is practically foreign.

Yondu had been a frontliner, once.

First day Stakar freed him, he saw him staring at a display of pretty glass ornaments. He plonked one in his hands, gruff and warm, calloused palms compressing around Yondu's.

“It's yours.”

Yondu had stared at it for a long time. Slaves might occasionally earn themselves shiny things, but they were never given free of charge.

“How many men do I gotta kill?” he asked, because of course Stakar wanted recompense. But the Ravager captain had smiled and bumped his head lightly, over the slit where a crest had once sat but an implant had yet to be jammed.

“No killing unless I give the say-so. Alright, kid?”

And so Yondu was left, staring baffled at the toy, turning it over in case there were orders inscribed on its base. When he approached Stakar in his room that night, and enquired if payment was to be made through other means, Stakar sighed and rolled so his back faced the awkward twenty-year-old hovering at his door. He patted the warm dent he'd left on the mattress.

“Go to sleep,” was all he said.

He never bought Yondu a trinket again. Instead, he taught him how to steal them.

There's something delightfully ironic in it, Yondu supposes. He was stolen by Stakar, and Stakar made him a thief.

But in all his years, Yondu has never burgled anything twice. Thievery is a one-time foray, not a game – should the prize be taken back, you don't chase it down. It's why jobs like the orb, jobs where the gizmo actually matters more than a payout, are so rare. 

A thief is a transitory stage. They're a courier who escorts an item-of-value from one a-hole to the next – nothing more, nothing less. Should you keep what you're stealing, or (stars forbid!) let yourself _care_ about it, it's guaranteed to bite you in the ass.

Quill is the prime example. Although Stakar ain't much better, having repeated Yondu's mistake a decade prior. It's a generational cycle, and Yondu wonders how long it will continue as he lays slumped on the floor under his cage, shivering too hard to crawl for the door.

Find stray. Adopt stray. Be betrayed by stray. Rinse and repeat.

The Slavekeeper toes him onto his back. He pulls a face at the mess of sweat and god-knows-what-else that's soaking his smock (Yondu certainly ain't in a state to keep track of the fullness in his bladder). He shoves his face to the side so he doesn't have to look at the squelchy sinkhole of his eye socket.

“This one ain't gonna make the march,” he says. To whom, Yondu ain't got no clue. His sphere of vision has been severely reduced, both by the new hole in his head and the wobbly daze of the fever. He lolls limp as the Keeper drags him to sit, muscles like wet plasticine. As soon as he releases him, he slumps. “Look, he can't even stand.”

“What do we do with him?” Yondu can't focus, although he heaves his head in the vague direction of the sound. “Kill him now, and be done with it?”

“Let me check. You know the sort of shit Udonta pulled.” He's lowered, or possibly raised. It could be either – he’s breathing too fast, and he’s shaking so much, and he can’t tell which way is up or down. The bootcap which had turned him now wriggles under a flap of frayed smock. This is drawn up until Yondu's bared to his lower back, all sweat-glossed skin and gooey blood. And, of course, those crisp black letters. “We're not allowed to slit his throat. The Accusers want him hurting until his very last.”

A snort. “Can you blame them? Which of the patriarchs did he murder again?”

 _Vahi, Girill, and Kirz,_ Yondu thinks. He frowns when the words in his head are echoed by the Kree reading his tattoos. They sink slowly into his brain, like water absorbed by an already-squishing flannel. They're followed by a flash of fury, fury like he'd felt after Stakar taught him what _freedom_ meant, fury for all he'd been denied. A childhood never enjoyed, a life never lived, a potential never realized.

_I'd kill 'em all again, if I could._

But he ain't gonna get that chance.

“I'm not nursing him until the infantry finish him off,” the Slavekeeper decides. “I've got other Servers in better condition. I say we chain him to the edge of the asteroid and let the septicemia finish him.”

Septi-what-now? That's a bad word. Yondu can't quite recall the definition.

“Look at these,” the Keeper continues, pushing the smock further up. There's an odd _peeling_ sensation, one which Yondu's brain informs him ought to be accompanied by pain, but which his nerves don’t match. The sudden rank smell makes him shudder. It's like the grills in the _Eclector,_ galley, where meat-drip puddles and putrefies. Knowing that he's the source makes it a thousand times worse. “Already going black. Let this do our work for us.”

 

* * *

  

“I'm sorry,” says Kree boy.

He activates the cuffs binding Yondu's wrists to the pole. That has been rammed into the rock face at an angle, so there ain’t no way he’s gonna slide off it, even after he's dead. There's a whipcrack discharge of light. The forcefield malfunctions – old equipment, botching equipment, equipment only fit for the execution of a slave. Before Yondu can celebrate (not that he's lucid enough to do anything but lean on the boy, and shiver) the cuffs divert around the glitching circuit. Solid green light hauls him upright, dragging his arms above his head so his weight's on his shoulders. Every too-quick, fast-snatched breath is a marathon.

Kree boy repeats himself as he steps away, letting Yondu swing: “I'm sorry.”

He says it too quiet for the others to hear, and he certainly doesn't help him.

A part of Yondu wants to spit at his feet. But another part, the dozy and fever-full majority, is telling him that it's better to die under one concerned gaze than a hundred hostile ones. Plus, his mouth is so dry that he couldn't suck saliva from his cheeks if he concentrated on nothing else for the upcoming week. As he ain't gonna survive any longer than that, all attempts would be moot anyway. Might as well save his strength for dying with whatever scraps of dignity are left, as the sun beats down, and the bones chained to either side of him sway in the artificial breeze.

They're at the dividing line between light and dark. On one side of the partition, the shadowed asteroid is bleak and frigid. On the other, the air blazes at a constant hundred degrees, while more heat radiates from the bare-stripped stones. The temperatures are comfortable for a Kree, and tolerable for a Centaurian, so long as the atmosphere is thick and muggy with rainforest vapor. But this parched expanse is as far from a natural habitat as Yondu can get without being marooned on Hoth.

The Kree boy notices blood, trickling from fissures in his dry lips. He holds a canteen to his mouth. The nozzle slots inside. Yondu champs it weakly, not realizing that he has to suck, until the Kree sighs and assists him. He  cradles the back of his implant, tipping both him and the bottle back, back, dizzyingly back, until the water fills him of its own accord. Luckily, Yondu has the coherence to swallow rather than inhale.

“Infantryman Girill,” snaps the Slavekeeper. “What is this?”

 _Girill,_ Yondu thinks, drooling what he can't work past the sandpaper-rasp in his throat. _I know that name._

Girill jerks to an attention that makes Yondu's crooked spine ache with its straightness. His eyes dart nervously as he answers: “The dehydration will kill him too soon. That's all, Slavekeeper, sir.”

“Hm.” The Keeper steps in, grabbing Yondu's jaw and shaking him side-to-side. “That had better not have been poisoned. I know your family was lobbying for us to execute him, but the Accusers decided unanimously upon this verdict -”

“A slow death, Slavekeeper,” Girill says. “I was at the tribunal. I am aware.”

The Slavekeeper holds Yondu's chin a moment longer, waiting for him to start frothing. When he fails to comply, he snorts and shoves his head against the rock. The implant clangs, a stripe of pain that blares through his skullbones and settles in his hollowed eye: a migraine-jab and the ache of a phantom limb rolled into one. “Hopefully, this will leave them satisfied. Now, Infantryman Girill? Report to the barracks for orders. Can’t be late for your first deployment.”

Girill tramps away, as commanded. If he looks back, it's only once he's past Yondu's lone watery focal point.

Then there are two.

The Slavekeeper stays where he is. He stands close enough for Yondu's eye to make out the mismatched shades of their skintones, and how the Kree looks to be made of a mesh of pores, whereas if Yondu were to be examined under a microscope, his epidermis would reveal tessellated scales.

“You're lucky that there are no insects on this asteroid." The Keeper reaches around him to grope the shredded flesh on his back, then further down, fishing for a reaction. Yondu doesn't so much as twitch. “You will rot as slowly as you die.”

It's stupid to waste the moisture in his mouth. But Yondu gathers up a wet ball to bathe the man's face with anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **The rescue is on its way - due to arrive next chapter, in fact.**


	17. In which there is a (long overdue) rescue

What is heat?

Heat is movement. A wobble, an atom reverberating in the place afforded to it by quantum gravity, transferring energy to those on either side. Heat is animation, heat is life. Until heat roasts you in your skin.

Yondu's knuckles brush. They're flaky to the touch, like pork crackling. Hala's captive supergiant wobbles in and out of a star-sized mirage. The Kree system is migratory – all of their technology siphons solar energy, and once every ten thousand years the entire civilization has to uproot and find a new sun to tap. This one though, is still in its prime. Oxygen is maintained in a rich layer close to the asteroid's surface. But there's no ozone above it, and radiation lashes the rock with every roil of the cosmic wind.

All in all, a week is a generous estimate. 

 

 

* * *

  

“They're leavin'.” Kraglin's as annoying as a crane fly, as well as proportionately similar. He buzzes by Peter's shoulder and reports the information that's scrolling across the scan-screen like Peter can't read it for himself. “Now's our chance. We fly down, we intercept the Infantry, we nab the cap'n, we go.”

“You're not in charge,” Peter reminds him. He swings the scanner between them, so Kraglin has to try and interpret it upside down.

“He's not.” Stakar agrees, over the comm. “I am.” His craft noses a calculated length in front of the _Milano_. The Ravagers shift to flank him. Stakar's Ravagers, that is. Peter needs a way to differentiate, before this gets confusing. 

Kraglin hasn't brought many of Yondu's band – only Tullk and Oblo and co.; the very, very select few who stayed loyal to the cap'n in spite of Peter's desertion. (Peter can't dwell on that, for fear that the shame will eat him alive. Logically, he knows he had no choice – the stone could only be safe in the custody of the Nova Corps. But that doesn't mean he can't regret it.) 

As a result, the bulk of their reinforcement comes from Stakar. It took them almost a month to gather enough resources for an all-out assault on a Kree fortress. They had the choice early on: either wait for Stakar's crew to catch them up, or dive in solo. As one of these options was suicide, Peter's crew vetoed it. Peter himself was less easy to convince. It's only the new locks Rocket quietly fashioned for the Milano's airlock that prevent him from nabbing the escape pod and flying off without back-up.

Peter, blessed with a thief's ingenuity, could have found another way. But the combined efforts of the Guardians thwart him at every turn. While Gamora claims he will be grateful one day, Peter ain't feeling it yet.

He's had a new set of leathers tailored. Yondu's are too tight (as well as too disturbing to wear, when the captain isn't there to smack his head and demand he return them). The sight of that coat, folded over the back of the copilot's chair, is accompanied by a mental litany of tortures – blue flesh hanging in shreds, brands and whips and spread legs and screams. Every atrocity that can be enacted upon a Centaurian body over the duration of a month. And all because Peter was dumb enough to get caught.

He grinds his teeth. The sting in his jaw doesn't assuage the guilt - doesn't do anything but make his ears pop and his eyes water. Stakar's right. He doesn't deserve to lead. Not when this is his fault.

“Peter,” says Gamora softly. She touches his arm. She hasn't moved to take the copilot's chair – none of them have. Before Kraglin abandoned his crew and pledged himself to the cause, during that first week where everything felt raw and unreal, as if Peter might open his eyes at any moment to find himself back on the _Eclector_ , the orb incident and everything that followed it no more than a dream; Peter's initial optimism sunk into despondency.

Why should anyone side with them? Going toe-to-toe with the Kree ain't never a good idea. But going toe-to-toe with the Kree in the vicinity of Hala, for the sake of someone who could very well be dead? That's crowning stupidity, of the sort that'd get Peter smacked for so much as considering it, if Yondu were here.

But Yondu ain't. And that's the problem.

In the midst of that awful, sleepless period, when it had only been his team and the far-off blink of Hala's supergiant, Peter told a story, teary-eyed and trembly-voiced, of how Yondu sat in the co-pilot's chair of this very ship.

Back then, the _Milano_ had been nameless – a spare that Yondu figured was too sturdy for Peter to damage, but which was due to be overhauled anyway if he did. As soon as Peter laid eyes on her, he fell in love. Yondu scoffed, and cuffed him, and warned him against sentiment. But he'd guided his ten year old hands through his first lift-off all the same.

None of the Guardians have dared park their asses there since. Yondu's coat is like the marker on a grave: too respected to disturb. They fold the ripe leather blanket, soft and crackly with age, more neatly than it had ever been during its tenure with the Ravager captain. Gamora hasn't offered to wash it. She knows better.

Peter shrugs her off. He can't forgiven his team, not yet. While he knows they felt that to them, Yondu is nothing more than the persona that he projects – a tough blue asshole who'll do anything for money – he's unsure if he can let this go. At least, not until his captain's back by his side, knuckling Peter's head in greeting and boxing his ears when he backtalks.

Then, Peter thinks, he could forgive anything.

“Stakar,” he says, ignoring Gamora's quiet sound of disappointment. “How do we know if Yondu's moving out with the squadron? The Kree said he wasn't going to be a Frontliner.”

Stakar isn't like Yondu. He doesn't snap at him for questioning his orders (and it's ridiculous, how much Peter misses that when he's only ever complained about it in the past). Peter only knows the guy from Yondu's sloshed stories. While all the Ravagers imbibe on a regular, nigh constant basis, the times when their captain gets maudlin are few and far between. However, on those rare occasions, Yondu's descriptions of the Ravager Admiral waver between a respect so heartfelt that not even his boozey slur can disguise it, and a vicious mix of hurt and betrayal. The only time Peter heard _Stakar_ from lips other than his, it was being hissed at them from across a bar.

_We don't serve your kind, oathbreaker. Stakar's orders._

When Kraglin suggested the man as an ally, Peter looked at him – and the sparse pack of redcoats he'd gathered – as if he'd recommended they join forces with the boogieman. But Stakar has proved invaluable. He knows a lot about the Kree: their customs, their machinations, their movements. And as soon as Peter mentioned the word _slave_ , Stakar's grim face became grimmer. He plugged the Milano's coordinates into the mainframe of his flagship, and diverted half his fleet to their side.

The Hundred and Twenty-First Division won't stand a chance. Only one variable lays beyond their control: whether there'll be anything left of Yondu to rescue.

Stakar rubs his chin. “Take your Guardians to the surface of the asteroid,” he decrees. “We'll handle the infantry.”

Peter bypasses Rocket's gleeful little “Hey, he called us 'Guardians'!”

“Sure,” he says. “Rendezvous a klik centerwards of here?”

Stakar nods. He guns his engines. Kraglin's hand clamps on the back of Peter's chair, tightening until the plastic creaks and his knuckles look ready to burst.

“Go,” he growls, rank breath misting Peter's ear. “Cap'n ain't got time to waste on yer moping.”

“Ya could always have brought your own ship, skinny.” That's Rocket, amicable as ever. He bares his teeth when Kraglin snarls. Gamora intervenes before claws or knives can be brandished.

“Stop it, you two. We're not here for you to bicker; we're here to save Yondu.”

“Something we can all agree on,” Peter says.

There's a quizzical “I am Groot?” from Rocket's shoulder. Rocket starts, only just remembering his cargo. He releases his hold on Peter's chairarm, staggering towards the hatch at the cockpit entrance in time with the buffets of meteorites against their shields. The _Milano_  dives towards the barracks: a bright metallic growth that spans the asteroid's illuminated side like it has been dipped in silver. “Groot shouldn't see this. I'm putting him to bed.”

“Nonsense.” When Drax folds his beefy arms, there's barely enough space for his pectorals to cram beneath them. “I delighted in observing battles when I was his age.”

Peter glares. “He's not going to be seeing a battle. He's gonna be seeing what they've done to Yondu. My captain. The closest goddamn thing I have to a father -”

Kraglin stands so close that his gasp tugs the hairs on Peter's neck. Peter doesn't look at him. Doesn't acknowledge what he's just said, doesn't make any more of it than what is encompassed by that single word, tossed out between them with barely a quaver. It’s a truth that he's denied for years – and he had every right to. But now he's claimed it, there's no going back.

 _Father_.

“I don't want to see it, Drax,” he continues. “I want to hide away. I want to pull the covers over my head and pretend this isn't happening. But I'm an adult. I have a duty to deal with it – and I will. Groot. Is. A. Child. He doesn't need to -”

“Peter.” Gamora's hand returns. This time it clamps so tightly that Peter can't shake it off, and suspects he wouldn't be able to if aided by pliers and a crowbar. “Please watch where you're flying. We're approaching atmosphere.”

The air resistance judders through them as they breach. Flames spill from the _Milano's_ wings, accenting her orange highlights with fire. Peter yanks the joystick up. He spirals the _Milano_ horizontally across the asteroid rather than crashing into it headfirst. Then slams on the metaphorical brakes – metaphorical because an M-ship doesn't have wheels, and the only way to make an airborn vessel screech to a halt is to calibrate the strength and direction of her thrust to counteract the forwards momentum – when he spots a flicker of blue, just visible against the rocky plateau that whizzes by below.

No time to warn them. He twists the Milano into a nosedive.

The thud in his chest almost drowns out his teammates' hollering. Gamora yells in his ear. Drax – of course – laughs. There's an angry “I am Groot!” as their youngest resident flies off his mattress of wet dirt and compost. Rocket threatens everything he bumps into, from the chairs to the walls to Kraglin, and Kraglin grabs a handful of gingery hair. He treats it to such a pulling that it's a miracle he has yet to rip any out.

But above it all, above the yells and the sear in his scalp and the rapidly-approaching swell of the asteroid, all Peter can think is _Yondu_.

He looks impossible tiny from above, differentiated from the terrain only by his color. As they approach, this impression doesn't fade. Yondu looks too small. Too limp. Like he's been flung against the rock hard enough to stick.

Peter levels them out. He sprints to the docking hold – full-on _sprints_ , leapfrogging his chair and barging his team out of the way when they don't clear it fast enough. He's lucky Groot is in the side-cabin. Not that he would consciously let him get underfoot in his desperation to reach what he's spied through the Milano's landing cameras: a blue body, painfully thin, cuffed upright against a wall. But it's best not to tempt fate.

Kraglin is right behind him.

“Stakar,” he snaps, into his wrist-comm. “Stakar, we've found him. He needs medical aid. Yeah, I know yer engaging with the Infantry. But the _Milano's_ bacta tank ain’t big enough for total immersion. We need yer crew here, stat...”

Peter's glad Kraglin has remembered their allies. Sending coherent vid-messages is the last thing on his mind.

“Yondu!” He wrenches the door hatch. He barrels through before it's fully reeled apart, shoulders scraping sun-warmed metal. The heat hits him like an opened furnace. It's a wall of warmth, merciless and roasting, dredging sweat to the surface of his skin. But Peter feels nothing but cold – desolate and slow-creeping, like the march of frost over the insides of the cockpit window the first time he tried to run away. He refuses to call it dread, because that would mean acknowledging that there's a chance they're too late, and Yondu died believing nobody cared enough to save him.

Four meter drop to the ground. He punched in the hover function on automatic, and is glad to see that the _Milano's_ shadow falls on Yondu's face. But as Peter spins and drops to grab the lip of the airlock, then again to the earth, catching the brunt of the landing on his shoulder and rolling to dispel the impact, he clocks the signs.

The sunburned navy; the cheap woollen garment that's been cooked dry despite multiple soakings in sweat. The chipped varnish of dry blood over the wall, more snaking down from between Yondu's scarred legs...

His head hangs on his neck. The contrast between the white rock and the darkness beneath the _Milano_ is so blinding that Peter can't make out the details of his features. But he knows him by the implant. Peter scrambles to his feet, kicking up dust, and runs to Yondu's side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Let the comfort begin**


	18. In which the rescue continues

Kraglin hits the sand with a muffled thump. He'd lingered long enough to grab a multitool. Smart man. Smarter than Peter – Peter who was stupid enough to get captured, and to think that Yondu wouldn't sacrifice anything and everything to get him back. Peter who's stupid enough to jump out of an M-ship and run to his chained ex-captain without any means of breaking his bonds.

He clasps Yondu's cheeks instead. They're too hot, far too hot, and rough with stubble after stars-know-how-long without shaving. The shape of the belt, which had been wrapped around him when the exchange was first made, is still imprinted on his cheeks: two navy stripes, like the flattest and most unamused Glasgow grin.

“Yondu! Yondu, can you hear me? Yondu!”

There's no response. At least, no audible one, other than a long low groan that at least convinces Peter that Yondu ain't dead, and that his breath hasn't gotten any pleasanter while they were apart.

Peter doesn't care. He hugs him, helpless and furious and desperate, lifting the weight off Yondu's arms best he can. Yondu's ribcage stutters round a full gasp. That's enough of a thanks – Peter doesn't need to hear him say it. He just needs Yondu to not die, and to open his eyes...

His eye.

Peter's jolted out of his body. The realization pushes him far away from himself, and he watches from a great height as he raises a trembling hand to that hollow well. He wonders distantly if he's going to be sick.

Then it all floods back. How light Yondu feels in his arms; how he reeks of infection and fever; how his smock's been ripped to scraps by hungry Kree hands and the abrasion of the wall. Peter's fingertips find the unnatural, soft squish of pus-bloated gashes when they roam Yondu's back.

And, of course, there's the eye. The socket is a round pit, empty and lifeless. Peter can't stop staring at it.

On the other side of his face, Yondu's lashes are grey with dust. They barely open. Just a sliver. And even then, they don't focus on Peter's face – or rather, they _do,_ but there's no recognition there. He's already limp. But when Peter hooks arms around his legs, heaving him up so he isn't dangling like a crucified man, Yondu goes impossibly slacker. There's none of the fight, the fury, the rage against the galaxy and any its occupants who dare defy him, that Peter remembers. Not even a threat that he's gonna be stew.

Peter shakes him. Yondu's head flops loose, implant clonking on the wall and jaw slack. The only reason he isn't drooling is because his lips are cracked and dry, bloody clots staining their surface.

“It's me! Yondu, it's me! Look at me, look at me -”

“Out the way,” Kraglin growls. Peter only moans and hugs Yondu harder. One of the slices – made by a knife? A whip? Sharp Kree nails? - starts to leak. It's disturbingly _sticky,_ more like treacle than blood, and it smells of rancid death and cancer medication.

God. He really is going to throw up. But he can't, because then he'd have to let go of Yondu.

Kraglin might be a flapper when there's other folks around to take charge, but when there's a crisis, he always pulls through. Right now, he scoffs at Peter's sniffles, and reaches over him to where Yondu's wrists are chained to a rusted pole. His fingers are completely unresponsive. They're blood-fat, like the circulation's been cut off in one direction, and the raw slices where the cuffs have pinched are crunchy with sand grains.

“Hell," he mutters. Then, jabbing Peter with his elbow as he manipulates the multitool into the cuff's sparking forcefield lock - "I'm getting him down. You ready to catch him?”

He's already carrying the bulk of his weight. It's terrifying how little of Yondu there is, without his bulky coat and the attitude that makes him the biggest guy in any room, regardless of stature. He's underfed and feverish. Dehydrated to the point of delusion too, if the way he's hanging here so passively is any indication. 

The Yondu Peter knows would kick and bite and snap for him to _quit coddlin' me, ain't a goddam baby._ He'd threaten him with weeks in the bilges if he didn't let go _this instant_ , and he'd spend the next hour alternating between chewing Peter out for daring to show sentiment, and for being stupid enough to waste it on him.

Peter buries his head the sunburnt flakes of Yondu's throat. He inhales there, trying to filter the stench of sick-sweat and septic blood until he finds something of Yondu. _His Yondu,_ the Ravager captain who raised him with punches and slaps and the occasional toothy chuckle. Not this near-dead blue thing who scarcely looks bigger than Gamora.

“I've got him,” he promises. Then again, rubbing his nose over Yondu's pulsepoint to reassure himself it's still ticking - “I've got you. I've got you, dad, and I'm so, so sorry.”

 

* * *

 

Yondu opens his eye to Stakar. Or rather, his snoring face, lax on the exhale and strained on the in.

He's twenty years old again. He reclines on the indicated spot besides the pirate who'd wrenched the collar from his neck, thrown it on the ground, stamped on it, and shot it like he would a varmint space-parasite. He's careful not to brush his arm, holding his breath as if that'll stop the mattress denting, and lowering himself so slowly that his abdominal muscles quiver.

Once flat, he stares blankly at the ceiling. He's waiting to be rolled so that all he can see is the pillow and his own clenching fists.

But that doesn't happen. By the time morning breaks – or rather, as they are off-world, the automatic solar-lights ease on, filling the captain's cabin with a warm gold ambience that smooths scars to vague silver streaks -Yondu hasn't been touched more than a nudge of a knee, as Stakar shifts in his sleep.

His new master – although he doesn't like to be called that, and makes angry faces when Yondu tries – wakes slowly. No formal morning routine has been hashed out. Yondu decides his best option is to remain still and quiet, and to observe the man who owns him for any signs that he wants his feet rubbed, or water fetched, or cock sucked.

Sure enough, when Stakar drags himself to sit, groaning a yawn into one hand and wincing at the smell of his own morning-breath, he scratches the zipper of his pants – almost absent-mindedly, like he's not even thinking about it. Yondu sighs and bows over his lap. But when Stakar grabs his head it's to push him to one side, not to crush him close.

“Go get breakfast, kid.”

He sounds unspeakably sad.

 _Not a kid,_ Yondu wants to spit. That's the part of him that got him promoted as an adolescent, graduating at fourteen from the ranks of child serving slaves to the gladiatorial rings, and then at sixteen to the frontlines. He'd fought with the arrow his parents threw in as part of the two-for-one deal. The Kree were fascinated by it, taking him from the training pens to prod and poke, and map his brainwaves and the tonal graphs of his whistles over endless reams of holo-data. There was talk of prosthetics, of improvements, of _enhancements._

A few scholarly types asked questions about heritage and culture, but Yondu didn't care about those. All he knew was that a unique weapon gave a frontliner an edge. Yondu downed many an enemy with that tool, and sawed off many a scalp.

But inevitably, someone saw the tall red swoop of his crest, and set it at the crosshairs of their blaster. Half-devoured by necrosifying plasma, which encroached further through the tissue with every pump of his heart, Yondu had the choice of cutting it off or dying where he'd fallen.

He'd chosen the former. And as a frontliner without his magic trick was all but useless, his then-masters – the Kirz – decided to get money out of him rather than sending him to die in an ongoing conflict.

The gaping headwound was stitched and the snapped dorsal struts sandpapered down to their roots. His torso was decorated with gold piercings rather than whip-stripes. His red collar was exchanged for a pretty green one, and he was herded into a ship to be delivered to a master who'd expressed fascination with a rare Centaurian male, despite his crestless status.

They hadn't reached deepspace before the proximity alarms blared, then the hull breach alarms, then silence. When Stakar lifted the collar from around his neck, shooting the first man through the skull when he muttered _that boy's cargo, boss;_ _he must be worth a pretty penny if they spent this much on security,_ Yondu assumed his new master didn't want to pay. And, when he discovered otherwise, his next assumption was that he'd be sold on to the first fatcat with an eye for blue.

But Stakar saw potential. He nurtured it, and it grew, and one day Yondu got too big for his boots and brought it all crashing down.

It's a generational cycle, to be betrayed by the strays you saved. But it's also apparently a generational cycle to be dumb enough to take all those hard truths learnt about the nature of loyalty, and that gnawing ache of _loneliness_ from having lost the closest thing you have to an heir (not a _son,_ never that, or at least never not in a small space in Yondu's mind that he reserves for thoughts he should mock, but can't quite bring himself to) and still forgive them.

Yondu thought only he was that stupid – to take Peter's punishment for him and return to Hala. Yet here is the proof, right before him, that idiocy runs in the family.

“Stakar,” he croaks. It's difficult. Barely a shaped aspiration – it doesn't even sound like a word. He hasn't spoken in so long, and his mouth is still cracked around the edges, both from exposure and the bruised streaks left by the belt. Oddly, he doesn't feel pain. But that's such a relief – and a novelty – that he doesn't question it.

Stakar hears by the fifth repetition – each a little clearer than the last, as Yondu remembers how to make his vocal cords vibrate. He doesn't properly wake until the tenth though, and Yondu watches his snorts and rolls of the head at each hoarse hiss of his name with something that borders amusement. Affection. Maybe a bit of both. “Stakar, Stakar, Stakar -”

“Shuddit.” Stakar groans, rubbing between his eyebrows. “Your voice is irritating as ever.”

Yondu chuckles – or tries to. It's more of a cough. “Quill?”

“Right here.” Yondu has to turn his head to find him – a laborious process made even moreso by Stakar and Quill's attempts to keep him still and insist that he shouldn't be moving.

“Why didn't ya speak up earlier, boy? You watchin' me sleep?”

“Yes.” Quill's voice is short and clipped and _angry._ That ain't unusual, where Yondu's concerned. Boy's made his opinion of him known, over the years. But for some reason, he'd been stupid enough to allow himself to _hope._..

Yondu frowns as he tries to piece together an explanation. First possibility: Quill's pissed that he survived. He wanted the easy way out – a body to burn and a memory to mourn. He didn't want to face the moral dilemmas, shitty personality and bad smells that Yondu layers up around him, like one of those hermit crabs on Knowhere, which scuttle across the trash heaps and use discarded Beastie-tins in place of the shells they have no means of growing.

But if that's the case, why bother to rescue him at all? Let alone rope in Stakar...

So: second possibility. Peter's angry that Yondu was willing to go in his place, like the dumb noble Terran he is. This is more likely, because Quill is exactly the sort of stupid who can't see how he matters so much _more_ than Yondu, with his foolish sentimental heart and his precious music box that tethers him to a world several thousand lightyears away.

He'll come to realize though, in time. He'll spend a few days by Yondu's side and remind himself of what sort of person he is – else Stakar'll explain to him what happened to his siblings: all those wee little children who Yondu chauffeured to their death, one after another.

Then Quill will flip. He'll rage and he'll punch, and he'll say something like _you deserved it,_ or _we should've left you on that rock,_ and confirm every one of Yondu's self-directed thoughts.

Or, third scenario. Quill's feigning anger because he doesn't wanna show how much he cares.

That's something Yondu understands all too well. And if he had determined to treat Quill better than he'd ever been treated – even if this had been more trial-and-error than a cohesive stratagem – he's also sure that he doesn't want the kid to make his mistakes.

Perhaps it's whatever drugs he's on, or his near-brush with death, or the fact that during all the time he'd been strapped to that rock, gritty wind licking the skin off his face one gust at a time, he'd never once considered the possibility that they'd come back for him. But whatever the cause, Yondu can admit now what he's never been able to in the past.

He can't take the sentiment from Quill. Hell - he should never have tried. Because without that ability to care, that drive to fix what can never be accomplished by a single man? There's nothing. No hope for this galaxy.

While it's too late for Yondu - old sins and sufferance have buried into his psyche like ticks, only it'll take far more than tweezers and a match to get them out again - Quill ain't broken yet. He can still love, he can still  _feel._  He's still worthy of saving.

“Stakar,” he says, not bothering with the marathon trek of twisting his head. He hears the rustle of the old Ravager's leathers as he pushes to sit. “Can ya give us a minute?”

The hand, which compresses Yondu's shoulder gently enough not to aggravate the mottled hues of sunburn, whip-scars and brand, says yes. Yondu adamantly doesn't read any more into it. Can't go convincing himself Stakar's forgiven him. If he does that, it'll only be worse when he finds out he's wrong.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **I'm working on the 'they have drugs that block pain without making you high as shit' theory, although that would also work, I guess. XD**


	19. In which there is a much-deserved hug

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **CN: One very brief passing mention of child rape.**

He waits until the door gushes closed. They're on a Ravager ship; the flame mosaic on the high dome of the medbay ceiling is unmistakable. But it ain't the _Eclector._ Too clean, for one thing, and not nearly enough rust. One of Stakar's? He wonders if he'll be booted off it as ceremoniously as the last time – with a spacemask and an arrow to his name, ripped flame patch dangling from his sleeve.

No point concerning himself with what ain't yet come to pass. He opens his eyes, and fills 'em with the sight he never thought he'd see again.

Quill.

Peter fuckin’ son-of-a-Celestial Quill, big and blue-eyed as ever. There's a warmth in Yondu's chest that he'd mistake for the afterburn of a good whisky, if he'd touched a drop. He has a sneaking suspicion that it's _pride._

“You look good, son,” he croaks, running blue fingers along the nearest sleeve. “Like a real hero, y'know?”

Quill doesn't correct him on the 'son'. But hey, he's had a busy day – what with plucking his sorry ass from the Kree fortress and dogfighting his way to freedom. If it's even the same day, of course. Yondu has no way of knowing. And neither does he want to ask, because somehow, the thought that Quill and Stakar, the two people he's done most wrong by in the galaxy (excusing that cave full of bones in a planet far, far from here) might have willingly sat by his bedside for more than a single night, is terrifying. 

Quill shakes off his hand – which is expected. His wobbling lips are anything but. Yondu levels a warning finger.

“Might be laid out in the medbay, but don't think I can't smack ya if ya start blubberin’, boy.”

Quill valiantly wipes his eyes. Although a few tears escape, Yondu doesn't make good on his promise. Just sighs, long and low and heartfelt, and offers a corner of his bedsheet for Quill to blow his nose on.

“How old were ya?” he asks.

“Huh?”

“How old were ya, when I picked you up?”

Quill's face suggests that he thinks Yondu's brain has rotted from the heat. Who knows. Maybe it has? He certainly feels dopy, on the cusp of slithering into drug-induced sleep. He can't feel his back, and the absence of his eyeball would be unnoticeable, were it not for the blank space where he'd once had peripheral vision. However, this is a conversation that needs to be had. Yondu would rather face it now, while he's on the opiated side of sober. “Eight, or thereabouts.”

“Huh.” A brief silence. Then, quiet and matter-of-fact: “When I was eight, I got taken from my cage at night, and five lashes for crying after. D'you know that?”

Quill seems to have been expecting this. He draws himself up. “You're saying I ought to – what? Be grateful you didn't put me through the same shit? Congratulations on being slightly more decent then whoever owned you!” But something on Yondu's face – heck knows what, because he's looking at Quill calmly, absorbing each barbed word with the certainty he deserves it – makes him reconsider. “Okay. You were a lot better. Fuck. Okay, I get it. You were... trying, I guess. That doesn't mean you didn't hurt me, and it doesn't mean I forgive you.”

So it really is over. Peter will demand that he and Kraglin never contact his crew again. And for once in his life as a freed man, Yondu will do as he’s told - because he's already convinced the boy deserves better. He pushes slowly to sit on the bed, then makes to swing his legs over the sides, frowning when an IV line pinches.

“Take these out, then. I'll go.”

He's expecting compliance. He's not expecting Quill to fold to sit on the bed besides him, and shuffle until his beefy shoulder bumps Yondu's considerably scrawnier one. Perhaps he should've been though, because Quill has always wanted Yondu out of his life in indirect proportion to how much Yondu wants to leave.

“So I'm going to try too,” Quill whispers. He's too close to his implant; each word is an unpleasant moistness that grows and recedes with Quill’s breath, like Yondu’s sat under a humidifier. “I'm going to try, because I fucking care about you, you a-hole. I wanna make this work. And if you do too, you'll try just as hard. And maybe, in a couple years, we'll meet half-way.”

In Yondu's experience, most things that sound too good to be true are.

He can't take Quill up on this. He'll only fuck it up – kill someone he shouldn't, smack Quill when he's being hysterical, laugh a bit too hard or a bit too long when he sees a shithead chowing down on their rightful desserts. Then the offer will be rescinded. Quill will never talk to him again. It's a return to the metaphor of the starving man - like carrying an overflowing soup tureen on your back and not being allowed to drink a drop.

Yondu can’t live with that.

He shakes his head. “Ain't no hero, boy.”

“That's right. You're no hero.” Quill’s still fighting to stifle his sniffs. He inhales so hard his vocal cords vibrate: a wobbling, reedy, pathetic sound. “So don't you dare act like one again, you hear me? Never again.”

Yondu squints up at him, from where he'd been examining the patch on Quill's chest. Boy's clad in a leather coat that he recognizes all too well. If he's popped any of the stitching, he can sew him another. “The hell you sayin'?”

“I'm saying...” Quill’s sentence quivers to a halt. He’s psyching himself up for a revelation - most likely one of the sentimental variety. Yondu already regrets asking. But Quill doesn’t give him time to interrupt before he barrels ahead, gathering Yondu’s sunburnt, bandaged fingers in the curl of a big pink paw.“You don't realize how much you've missed something until you might lose it. Or... Or _someone,_ Yondu. Captain. D-”

“Don'tchu fuckin' say it...”

“-ad.”

And there it is.

Yondu swallows. The motion is too big and too dry, and it catches in his throat before bursting from him in a wretched, wracking cough. Quill immediately flaps for water. He finds a glass on the bedside table, and presses the edge of it – blissfully, miraculously cool _–_ to Yondu's lips. It lingers there, after Yondu's greedily slurped at the top few centimeters. It's the best damn thing he's ever tasted: pure and sweet and cleansing, like it's soothing his soul as well as his throat. Or, y'know, it would be. If Yondu had one of those.

Quill tilts the glass, letting him lap more bit by bit so he doesn't choke. Once it has been drained, and Quill has mopped the dribbles from Yondu's chin – which smarts, because he ain't a fucking invalid; but if he says that out loud there's a danger Quill might stop touching him and move away – he sets it on the sideboard with an empty chime, and retakes his seat on the bed, fingers steepled and elbows propped on his knees. When he looks Yondu in the face, there's a flinch – but it's well suppressed. Kid must've been practising while he was out.

“Your eye,” he says. Yondu starts. He'd almost forgotten, what with Peter dropping that d-word bombshell on him and damn near making him hack up a lung. “What happened?”

Yondu shrugs. “Ain't a pretty story.” But Quill ain't had a pretty life, even if it's considerably better than Yondu's own. When the brat pulls up his feet to sit cross-legged, making it clear he ain't going nowhere, Yondu continues with an internal sigh. “Killed the patriarch of the first family who owned me with an arrow through the heart. Second one through the cock. Third one, through the eye. His daughter found me before the others got a chance.”

He wonders if she survived the battle. And the Kree-boy – a son of the Girill dynasty, who by all rights ought to have chopped off a different part of him altogether. He wonders what he'll do if they're alive.

Quill looks like he’s going through all five stages of grief simultaneously. It's such a blatant and unashamed display of _emotion_ that Yondu's of half a mind to punch the mournful frown off his face. But he doubts he could hit with any more force than a dropped leather coat. Better to swallow his pride than reveal to Quill how weak he is in this moment – although from that despicable expression, Quill already knows.

“I'm sorry,” he says. He makes to touch Yondu's face, under the empty socket. And – _hell,_ his eyes are all misty again, and his chin's the approximate texture of blancmange. “I'm so, so, _so sorry -_ ”

Yondu does hit him them. Lightly, but only because he ain't yet capable of a full wallop. Quill's big shoulders barge and tug at the wires connected to him via sticky-backed suckers, as he gathers Yondu to him, practically pulling him onto his lap without care that he’s only wearing a sheet – _gross –_ and buries his face in his neck so Yondu has to suffer tears puddling behind his collarbones. Some of the wires stretch, others bend, others disengage completely, and there's a frenetic chorus of pleeps from the corresponding monitors.

“Dammit, kid, gerroff! What the hell you doin' -”

“You're getting hugged.” Quill's voice jerks up and down his throat like it's attached to the dumb waiter system back at the barracks. “I ain't letting go.”

Yondu puffs up – as much as he can, given Quill's beefy biceps are strapping him tighter than seatbelts, pinning his arms to his sides. “I'm yer cap'n!”

“Not anymore.” And – well, Yondu can't argue with that. Quill notices the way he freezes, then sinks away from the embrace, brittle-thin body dragging on his arms. “What?”

Yondu can't say that without the excuse of leadership and responsibility, he ain't got no reason to stay. He can't say that he wishes they could rewind to the first day he accosted a whimpery Terran in the storeroom he'd been tossed in to sleep, and hit him because he wouldn't stop crying. That he wants a chance to start over.

He definitely can't say that he wishes Quill had left him on that rockface, because dying is a helluva lot easier than what comes next – his inevitable push of himself in one direction and Quill in the other.

“Nothin',” he whispers. Shuts his remaining eye, paper thin lid clicking as it closes. He feels sand-blasted and scoured, like his skin's been etched. While he feels no pain yet, the _normalcy_ that's taken it's place is, if anything, less welcome. “Ain't nothing, kid.”


	20. In which Yondu escapes (and doesn't get far)

Yondu can't feel a thing – not from his back, not from his branded feet. Or rather, he can feel the brush of sheets against his skin, and, when he rolls himself painstakingly to the bedside after Quill's moped off to find them food, the cold steel floor against his toes. But pain? The sharp bite of disinfectant in his lashmarks, scouring under the loose flaps of skin? There's flark-all.

Must be some sorta fancy new Shi'ar medicine. Whatever it is, it's calibrated special. Centaurians are rare enough that they can't pop so-called 'universal' pills like the Xandarians or the Kree. They're kinda like Terrans in that regard – although luckily for Quill, his Celestial ancestry makes him immune to damn near everything the galaxy throws at him.

Contagions spread through the Ravager ranks once or twice an astral-year. Back when Quill was a kid, Yondu had rolled his eyes at all pretences at snuffles and snuck him candy-flavored placebos, which seemed to do the trick.

The stuff being fed into him via IV will have been concocted according to his own specs. That IV hasn't been attached to his inner-elbows or forearms - which is good, because they're too bruised from the intravenous feeding for his veins to be pierced without causing further damage. But if Yondu surveys the array of clear plastic baggies that swing in a row along an overhead scaffold, he can follow the tubes down to a little valve, connected to a pipe that in turn hooks into his calf.

It splatters blue blood everywhere when he yanks it loose. But as Yondu can't feel the sting, he decides it ain't worth worrying about.

If he's being medicated, where did his genome-data come from? Stakar must've begged it off Kraglin – no way would he keep the biometric specs of a traitor logged on his system, eating up valuable gigabytes of storage space.

 

 

* * *

 

First time, he doesn't make it to the medbay door. Five minutes after he's fallen (and struggled upright again, achingly slow) Kraglin lets himself in, caught between a yawn and a ball-scratch.

Yondu doesn't have time to think 'shit'. His mate's eyes pop and he scurries forwards, badgering him – in the meekest tones possible – about why he ain't laid up in bed.

“Done enough sleepin' for a lifetime,” comes Yondu's answer. He's actually managed to lever himself near-vertical, although he ain't quite mastered walking. He's propped against the wall, balanced on his toes so his burnt heels don't catch – just because they're numb doesn't mean he ain't doing them damage – and struggling to catch his breath. How can the stumble from the bed to here have exhausted him? Despite what his mind tells him – that he's fully capable of running, jumping, and even throwing the occasional fancy flip – his knees are buckling inwards and his bandaged feet skid over the tiles.

Kraglin grabs him before he can collapse. “Uh, sure. Les get you back to bed, though anyway, huh cap'n? Just in case...”

Yondu's snarl has him backing very quickly in the opposite direction. He holds onto his shoulders though, arms outstretched to get his vital organs out of biting range.

Yondu's smelly old smock is gone – for which he's grateful. But until the infection's been flushed from the new slashes that mar his spine, he can't wear shirts. He's found a loose pair of hospital pants, thin as paper. Ain't the most glamorous garb for an escape, but they'll do in a pinch. Other than that though, he's only wearing his own skin – which doesn't feel much more robust, given how much of it is flaky with sunburn.

This means his scars are free-for-all.

Kraglin's fingers are long enough to brush the edge of the brand. He frowns. Presses harder, trying to work out what that swollen, textured ring could be. Yondu glares at him for the five seconds it takes for him to trace the Kree warhammer, and for the shape to coalesce in Kraglin's fool brain. He keeps glaring through Kraglin's sharp inhale, and the immediate release of his shoulder that follows.

“C-Cap'n -”

“One word and I whistle.”

Kraglin opens his mouth to start pleading – and breaking Yondu's rule into the bargain. Then snaps it shut again. He shakes his head. “Won't do nothing, sir. Yer arrow's on the _Milano_. S'outta range.”

Finally – some useful information. Out of range or otherwise, the _Milano_ must be docked nearby. Quill's mushy band of goons wouldn't blast off without the boy. Not like Yondu would, and had done, several times in the past, whenever the kid didn't make rendezvous.

He'd always gone back for him of course: feigning nonsense about incomplete jobs or having spotted something else in the vicinity that was worth stealing. Anything so he didn't have to admit that the brat meant more than a sideways shit. No wonder Quill grew up thinking Yondu hated him just as much as the other way around.

But anyway. If the _Milano's_ docked on this galleon, that means both it and his arrow are within burgling distance. Yondu will be out of here before nightfall.

“And where're we?”

“Stakar's personal flagship.” Kraglin gestures to the fancy dome above them, a conical flask of steel. His eyes are too big for his face. He keeps peeping at Yondu, using his height to his advantage like he wants to see the scarred crosshatch of his back. Kid's one of the rare folks who's had the privilege of gawking at his old ones, but after his latest ordeal, there's a wealth of new material there for his perusal. “Says it's been done up a bit since you was last here, boss.”

“When he kicked me out, y'mean?” Far be it from Yondu to keep his first mate from feasting his eyes. He turns around, hiking the pants up his hips when they threaten to droop, so that they cover the first lines of his tattoos.

Kraglin bites his underlip. It's as slim as the rest of him – ain't much to dig his teeth into. He winds up gnawing mostly on stubble. Yondu can't _feel_ his eyes skating up and down, absorbing the brutalized patchwork of his skin: collar sores and whip stripes and sunburn, and everything in between. But there's a prickle on the back of his neck that anyone with a sense of shame might mistake for self-consciousness. 

“S'that why yer running away, sir? Because of Stakar?”

Yondu, one hand propped on the wall to aid him in his wobble towards the doors, shoots him a venomous glare. “You think cause I can't whistle I can't hurt ya, boy?”

“No,” whispers Kraglin. “I think ya can't hurt me because you can't whistle, you can barely walk, and yer skinnier than I am. Please, boss. Please go back to bed.”

Yondu flashes him a middle finger, and keeps walking.

Kraglin hovers at his side until he collapses for the third time, after which even Yondu's stubbornness has to concede that he ain't making this journey. Not yet. Especially not since they have an audience.

There are Ravagers all around them, dressed in Stakar's signature navy. Ain't no merlot to be seen, besides Kraglin's own jumpsuit, and the gold accents on every epaulette stand out like candle flames in shadow. It feels surreal. Like Yondu's walking through a dream, or a memory. Who knows - maybe he is. Maybe he's still laid out in a bacta tank, lungs filled with oxygen-infused healing liquid. Maybe he's still on that rockface. Maybe he's already dead.

But that's the drugs talking. Yondu ignores them, best he can, and continues.

Recruits have rotated since he last marched through these halls. Not that many of the old ones would recognize him, being that back then he'd been thirty pounds more muscular, boasting a new implant in his skull and an arrow at his hip, young and fit and in his prime, and able to take more than ten steps without leaning on something for balance. He doesn't know the faces who turn to observe his shambling passage, intrigued by the man they flew into war against the Kree over. Which – yeah, is something Yondu's still struggling to process.

That Stakar would do that, for him… He’s made powerful enemies, and Yondu can’t fathom _why_. 

Is there something he needs thieving? Some hell-bent suicide run, for a prize important enough that the Ravager Admiral would negate his shun-order of twenty-some years? That's gotta be it. Yondu's only surprised that Stakar hadn’t given him his new directive while he was laid out in the sickbay.

_Why can't you accept that people care about you?_

It's an internal voice – Yondu turns around to check. But although he blames it on the drugs (like he's blaming his dizziness, and his breathlessness, and the drool of blue blood down his leg from the ruptured vein which has yet to cease) he can't help but think that voice sounds a lot like Quill.

Martinex catches up with them as Kraglin escorts him back to the medbay, measuring his steps to Yondu's tiptoeing zombie-stagger. His crystalline features ain't the best at expressing emotion. That's good. Yondu focuses on that mineral wedge of a face, finding it far more palatable than the worried line of Kraglin's mouth, or the concern that's being broadcast by his dumb, pretty blue eyes.

“The hell you want, diamond-ass?” He must be sick, if that’s the best insult he can think up on the spot.

Martinex holds up ice-blue hands. His teeth are even shinier than Yondu's, but at least they're all uniform - diamond can take a pistol whip to the face, whereas enamel buckles and breaks. “Only to wish you a speedy recovery, buddy. And to remind you that you probably shouldn't be moving. Your back has yet to knit, and walking will only aggravate your wounds. And - oh, perfect. You ripped out your IV. Of course you did; because that's always a good idea -"

“Stow it, crystal ball. I'm fine.”

Martinex manages to look nervous, although heck knows how when he's got less in the way of eyebrows than Yondu himself. “You aren’t, buddy.”

“He ain't,” Kraglin confirms.

Yondu smacks him. His fist glances off, and it's obvious that Kraglin's oof – a little too late, a little too exaggerated – is for his own benefit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Yondu would be the worst patient! Feed me your comments xx**


	21. In which the Guardians drop by

He hates this.

He hates lying here, he hates  _convalescing,_ he hates barely being able to walk. He hates feeling  _trapped in his own body._ And he really,  _really_ fucking hates the idjits who've just interrupted his solitude.

“Fuck off,” he spits to the Guardians, sans Peter, who have arrived with a surprising lack of fanfare. They're almost  _subtle._  The big guy even manages not to barge any of the delicate medical equipment that's piled around Yondu like flowers on a death-barge, shrinking his big shoulders together and sucking in his cheeks in an effort to make himself smaller, which only results in him looking constipated. “Yer the last a-holes I wanna see.”

“Why?” Greenie still watches him like he's a dangerous thing. It's gratifying, in a way. Yondu actually preens a little, shuffling higher up the pillows, before remembering that he doesn't have his arrow and that this is probably an act to make him feel better about himself. Seems Quill's sentimental side is contagious. “You're angry that we took you to the Kree? You came willingly.”

“I had an arrow at all yer throats, and you know it!”

“But you didn't capitalize on that. For which we're all still alive. So I'll ask again – are you angry that we took you to the Kree? Or that we let Peter steal you back again?”

Ooh, she is one smart cookie. Yondu would like her, if she hadn't hit the nail on the head. “Course I am,” he seethes, gripping the pillow until his nails scratch through the case, digging into the stuffing. “You had whatcha wanted. You shoulda flown while you had the chance.”

“Hey!” The rat folds his arms. Twig rides on his shoulder, gripping a handful of whiskers for balance. “You ain't sounding all that grateful, blue.”

“Grateful? Ya let Quill fly into Kreespace, into an enemy barracks -”

“Which we knew would be deserted,” cuts in Drax. Yondu diverts the rest of his tirade, aiming it in his face instead of the rodent's. There's a disturbing amount of empathy contained in a body that small – like the rat thinks he  _understands why Yondu's lashing out,_ or some fool nonsense like that.

“They coulda set traps! They coulda left a home guard! Hell, that's what they usually do! Y'all were breathin' down Hala's neck; ya coulda brought down the fuckin' Accusers on yerselves! And for what?”

“I am Groot.”

“Huh?”

The rat scoffs. He stalks forwards, ignoring Yondu’s sneer, and plonks the lil' barky critter on Yondu's bedsheet. “He says 'for you', idiot.”

Yondu refuses to give in to the blink of big brown eyes, or the pap of tiny wooden hands on his ankle. “I coulda been dead,” he argues. Gamora's next to approach, perching side-saddle on the mattress. Her hand rests a calculated inch from his.

“But you weren't,” she says. Drax lumbers to join them, body cutting a dark swathe through the medbay's lights. The baking blast of the Kree's tapped star still lingers at the edges of Yondu's mind, like it has burned him on the inside as well as the out. He's grateful for the shadow Drax casts – then immediately pissed at himself, for being so.

Gamora pats the space next to her, encouraging Drax to park his wide-load backside. The bed tilts alarmingly in his direction. Idiots.  

“And so long as there was a chance,” she continues, while Yondu finds a rail to cling to so he ain't sucked into the sinkhole, “Peter would always go back for you. As would all of us. We follow Star-Lord's lead.”

“ _Star-lord_.” Yondu snorts, glaring to one side. But he doesn't roll to squish the Twig, who's crawled onto his calf and is making his clumsy journey up. He scoops the kid into one hand before he can broach awkward-groin-territory, and dumps him on his shoulder instead. Much better. He just prays he ain't as fidgety as Quill was when he was a brat, or Yondu can expect to be kneed several times in the trachea. “He finally got folks to use that dumb nickname?”

“Outlaw name.” Gamora catches his fingers, when they return to the mattress, Twig safely nestled behind his collarbone. She gives them a daring squeeze. And, more daringly still, holds on despite Yondu's glare. “He wants you to come with us, you know.”

Well, that's seven shades of stupid. Yondu shakes his head. “I got my own men to get back to.”

“Your own men who've been without leadership since you surrendered yourself to us and Kraglin answered the holocall. You really think you can wrestle them under control?”

“Think? Girlie, I  _know_ it.”

“Good,” says Gamora breezily. She treats his limp hand to another unrequited squeeze, before plucking Groot away. Twig ain't happy about this – he clings to Yondu's earlobe until he has to choose between letting go or taking it with him. Once he's been disentangled, and his angry protests quietened with scritches of the delicate bark-grain that runs vertically around what constitutes for a Flora Colossus's skull, Gamora sashays for the door, flanked by her fellow Guardians. “That means another few weeks won't make any difference. Spend them on the  _Milano,_ Yondu. For your son's sake.”

“He ain't no son of-”

The door closes before he can finish. Yondu slumps, hissing at the twinge. His spine tries to contort to the shape of his cage unless he concentrates. They're weaning him off the drugs – the quantity of glowing liquids in the bags has been decreasing on a daily rate. As a result, his wounds are swimming back to haunt him. His brands sizzle when they brush sheets, empty eye a constant jab.

“Thassit,” he grumbles, flipping a bird towards the door of his private ward. “You run, girlie. You know whas good for ya.”

The IV line, reinstated in his leg, tangles as he rolls onto his stomach. He kicks at it in frustration, but freezes at the warning pinch and twist at his vein. Last thing he wants is for Martinex to do what he'd threatened while he was patching him up, and put him under a rotating twenty-four/seven watch. If only because he'd gut whichever poor Rookies were assigned to him before the end of the astral-week. Then Stakar would have no choice but to punish him.

He rubs his shoulder, where a broad warm palm had hidden the brand from sight, however briefly. Despite his certainty that there ain't no happy ending here, and that Stakar would rather carry his grudge to one of their graves than  _forgive_ , Yondu ain't had the bastard willingly touch him in years.  

He doesn't want Stakar's disappointment. And that's stupid and sad and  _pathetic,_ but true.

Goddammit, he needs to do something. He can't just lie here – that's a surefire route to contemplating his future. With Stakar. With any of 'em, for that matter – Kraglin, with his sad eyes and his whispered invocations of  _sir_ , Greenie with her slender fingers around his, Quill with his brilliant beam, which Yondu has been the recipient of less times than he has digits on a hand... 

If experience has taught him one thing, it's that it's better to dash your hopes before the universe does it for you.

Yondu considers the IV. He shifts to sit in slow, shaky contractions, muscles so wasted that the slightest movement is an uphill slog. There's a clamp-thingie with a roller attached, and when he slides it into the lock position, the trickle of fluid doubles back on itself, snaking to refill the bag above. 

Yondu twists his leg as close as he can get it, steadying the insertion point with the skin stretched between thumb and forefinger. He jiggles it, testing to find where he feels the least pain. Then peels the dressing away – slowly, so slowly, tongue poked from the side of his mouth and forehead scrunched as tape peels from microscopic scales. The needle slithers loose with barely a sting, and the bead of blood that follows it ain't enough to stain his bedsheets.

Yondu bundles up the tubing. He lobs it as far away from him as he can get. Its other end yanks on the medical scaffold, making the whole contraption rock – but no bags split, and nothing's wasted.

 _There,_ Yondu thinks, wriggling his toes before setting them on the floor.  _Now Marty can't get mad._  

The chrome is cool under his bare feet, and a stupid part of him insists he should press his heel brands to it. The more sensible majority is quick to inform him what a terrible idea this is – it's less likely to soothe as it is to  _sear_ , and the last thing Yondu wants is for someone to interrupt his escape attempt because they heard him yelp. He pushes upright – then again, after a false start; and for a third time after he makes it but is betrayed by a stabbing protest from his back, and has to crash back down far more abruptly than intended. 

But at last, he stands tall. Taller than usual, in fact, given that he's teetering from foot to foot, trying to keep his balance while walking on his toes.

He could always crawl. It would be easier on a body that’s trained for that purpose, and it would stop his spine trying to curl like he's been packed in a crate for the night. But while slave-Yondu couldn't feel pride, newly-freed-for-the-second time Yondu nurtures just a smidgen - enough to decide that he's never going to crawl again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **I would say 'eventually he'll stop trying to run away from emotions' but this is Yondu so**


	22. In which Yondu gets a present

Second time he tries to escape, Stakar catches him. Quite literally, to Yondu’s disgust.

He carries him back to bed, and Yondu can’t help but feign a swoon, chuckling as Stakar rolls his eyes and hauls him into a fireman’s carry instead of a bridal one. Apparently the captain ain’t in the mood for humor – but then again, when is he ever?

As soon as he’s heaved Yondu onto the mattress, and sniffed the sheets and opted to ball them for the washpile rather than pulling them to Yondu’s chin, Stakar takes the chair that’s been left for anyone who wants to gawk at Yondu while he sleeps, and treats him to a stern glare.

“There’s a hole in you that needs to be filled.”

“Huh. Seem to remember you turnin’ that offer down.”

Stakar gives him A Look. It’s one of his best. “A hole in your  _heart_ , Yondu.” Yondu ain’t given a chance to snort, or to remind Stakar that there’s a time when he accused him of barely harboring a charcoaled husk. “I can’t force you to fill it. But I will be disappointed if you don’t make an effort.”

Yondu would like to tell him that he doesn’t give a shit about whether Stakar’s proud of him or otherwise. But you don’t lie to the One Who Knows. It only gives him more ammunition for his ‘told-you-sos’, after everything blows up in your face. “Go on then,” he mutters. “What’ll fill my  _hole_.”

He even manages to say it without sniggering. Stakar sighs. He brushes his knuckles along the scarred lattice which webs one side of Yondu’s skull, besides his gouged-out eye. “You already know.”

 

* * *

 

 

After that steaming pile of cryptic bullshit, Yondu needs a nap.

Of course, the universe ain’t kind enough to let him enjoy it. When he opens his eyes – or  _eye,_ singular - it’s to Quill shaking him, grinning like he’s stumbled across the Infinity Gauntlet in a thrift store, and armed with a small wrapped box.

Yondu’s impressed he managed to restrain himself from smacking him with it. He rolls to sit, Quill catching him with an arm around the waist and easing him the rest of the way when his muscles give out – and bearing the retaliatory elbow without complaint.

“Gerroff me – the hell – dammit Quill -”

“Honestly.” Quill sits back in his chair of his own volition, unphased by Yondu’s pathetic attempts to batter his skull concave. “Anyone else, and I’d think you didn’t want your present.”

Yondu freezes, fist drawn back. “Present?” Then, just in case Quill mistakes his glance at the box for  _excitement_ \- “The fuck you bringin’ me  _presents_ for? I ain’t no kid.”

“No,” Quill agrees. “You’re the closest thing I got in this universe to a father.”

He’s wrong – there’s a child-killing planet lurking around the outskirts of this galaxy, and one day Yondu’s gonna have to own up to it. But that day of reckoning ain’t come yet, and it won’t for the foreseeable future. So Yondu bears the syllables of that word with a grimace –  _fa-ther,_ two of 'em, both so soft they sound like they’re spoken through a mouthful of cotton wool.

“And on earth,” continues Quill, refusing to let his beam be tarnished by Yondu’s crossed arms, or his glare, or his scowl when the shiny wrapped oblong is deposited on his lap, “We have this thing called  _Father’s Day._ That’s when you give your dads presents, to thank them for -”

“For not eatin’ ya?”

“Something like that. Look, I saw it and thought of you. It’s no different to me pickpocketing things for your dashboard, yeah? Don’t make me come up with excuses, captain – uh, Yondu. Just  _take it._ ”

No matter how grouchy Yondu acts, Quill’s good mood ain’t gonna be punctured. He’s got a boppy tune blasting on his Walkman, one Yondu doesn’t recognize – must be from the second tape – and he’s smiling like he’s stared at a quasar for too long and contracted space-lunacy. His teeth are too clean for a Ravager’s, and the blue eyes beyond them too gentle. Luckily, as Quill ain’t a Ravager no more, this doesn’t matter.

But if his jubilance refuses to be cracked, maintaining this cantankerous facade is a waste of energy. Yondu lets it drop. He shifts cross-legged, rattling his present by his ear for a clue of what’s inside.

Ain’t all that big. The approximate length of his hand, and slimmer in breadth. Flat too, which rules out a trinket of the sort Kraglin and Peter used to smuggle him at every spaceport, despite his insistence that he could steal his own. (Luckily, by the time Kraglin set the first glass ornament down on his desk with an awkward neck-rub, a blush, and a smile, Yondu had grown out of offering his ass in payment.)

He can’t hear a sound when he shakes it, and wonders for a moment whether it’s a bank transfer chip, kept immobile inside the packaging by a forcefield grid of holomatter. Maybe Quill’s finally paying him back for that damn orb…

Too much to hope for. Quill couldn’t muster four billion units if he scraped his bank vaults with a rake, and those of his friends besides.

He strings things out a little longer, just because there’s something delightful in the way Quill rocks on the chair besides him, fidgeting away his anticipation as Yondu unpeels the paper fold by delicate fold. His nails catch. The rip is loud, in this rare snatch of peace. “Huh. Girlie wrap this?”

“Rocket, actually. Guy’s got clever fingers.”

“Shoulda known. S'far too neat for yer handiwork, son.”

Rather than getting huffy and insisting that he’s capable of knotting ribbon into rosettes if he damn well pleases, Quill laughs. “You’re not wrong there. Now c'mon, already. Open it.”

Who is this strange creature, who wears Quill’s face and speaks with his voice, but doesn’t take every opportunity to remind Yondu how much he hates him? For a moment, Yondu toys with the possibility that the Quill before him is a Skrull replicant. But no self-respecting Skrull warrior would ever try to snatch the present from him, or climb onto the bed when Yondu refuses to give it up and engage in a playful bout of wrestling that would bring Stakar out in hives, what with all his worrying about  _proper medical procedures_ and  _bed-rest._

Yondu wins, but he knows Quill lets him. And he must be getting used to being babied, because for once, he doesn’t care.

He sits on Quill’s lower back. The big guy grumbles about being used as a pillow – and grumbles more when he realizes Yondu’s opening the box while he can’t watch his expressions. Which is good, because when Yondu lifts the eyepatch, he’s mighty confused.

“Whas this?” he asks, hoarsely. “Boy?”

Peter wriggles in a futile attempt to get comfortable. Yondu’s ass ain’t as padded as it used to be, and having the bones of his pelvis bear down on your kidneys can’t be pleasant. “Back on Terra, all pirates wear eye patches. If they’d only lopped off your legs, I could’ve bought you pegs as well.”

Yondu laughs without quite meaning to. “Don'tchu go tempting fate, boy.”

“Me? Never.” But the mirth soon fades. Quill folds his forearms under his chin, staring at the wall ahead as he asks, faux-casual: “So. You coming with us, or what?”

Yondu sighs. A part of him wants to holler the boy out the room, box his ears, cuss at him for ever thinking Yondu would be so  _sentimental_ as to willingly share space with the team who cost him the biggest haul of his life. But they’ve been through a lot lately. He figures that just this once, he can let Quill down gently.

“I ain’t good for you,” he starts. Stops. Licks his dry lips, and continues from where he’d left off, examining the shift of muscle under his leather coat. Boy’s so big he’s probably stretching the damn thing. But maybe Yondu will let him keep it, if only because it gives him an excuse to hunt him down and demand its return at a later date, with added interest. “I ain’t a good man, period.”

Quill shrugs. He seems unconcerned by this confession. “Well, neither am I.”

“And whose fault’s that?”

“Hey!” Quill twists his head to one side, neck tendons popping. He manages to strain far enough to shoot Yondu a stink-eye, sharpened by decades of mutual grudge-matches. “Don’t give yourself all the credit, old man. I was picking fights long before you first threatened to eat me.”

“Who you callin’ old?” But he clambers off Quill, parking himself by his head (and resisting the urge to fart). He even dons the eyepatch, which is of a burgundy that will complement his coat, should Quill ever relinquish it. Kid’s got an eye for these things. Who knew? Yondu should have quit using him as a pipe-cleaner when he was a wee thing, and loaned him out to the tailor instead.

Quill’s smile is small and satisfied. Yondu – of course – has to stomp on it.

“Y'know this don’t mean nothin’,” he says, after the silence has stretched so long he dares call it  _comfortable._ “I ain’t coming with ya, boy.”

That smile doesn’t drop. But it does waver, and Quill drags himself to sit besides him, looping his meaty arms round his knees and hunching into a ball, like he used to when he was a brat. Back then, Yondu never allowed himself to toss a companionable arm over his shoulders and draw him close. But there ain’t no one watching. And maybe a few minutes spent snorting Yondu’s armpit guff is exactly what the boy needs, to get himself back in a sensible headspace.

“I ain’t coming with you,” he repeats, dragging Quill against his ribs. “But I figure there ain’t nothin’ wrong with havin’ myself the occasional visitation day.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **ssssh I know yondu probably wouldn't hear 'father' as 'fa-ther' through his translator ssh (also I realized I used the wrong 'complement' and I'm mad at myself because I Am A Professional Editor But Proofreading Your Own Work Is Hard)**


	23. In which the gang parts ways

Third time Yondu escapes it's not an  _escape,_ not really _._ Not when he ain't chained or cuffed, and there's no collar around his neck. 

(What has been done to that, he wonders? He ain't seen bolt nor locking mechanism of that yellow-painted atrocity, the insides of which were permanently discolored by his blood. Somehow, the thought of it being ejected from a waste disposal hatch, as is the norm; or salvaged for the rare occasions when their canons short-circuit and the crew have to load the guns with grapeshot, ain't enough. He wants the damn thing vaporized. Dissolved. Obliterated from existence entirely.)  

Stakar's crew don't try to stop him. They politely request that he return to the medbay and, when he laughs in their faces, sigh and move along.

Yondu makes it to the hangars. He still stumbles, still shakes. But he can lay his feet flat on the floor, so long as he doesn't rock too much weight onto his heels. And while his back hurts, it's the  _good_ kind of hurt – the stretch and pinch of knitting skin.

 

* * *

 

He walks further than ever before. Stakar's flagship is a fair sight larger, and shinier, than the  _Eclector._ Yondu reckons he has tramped through its winding halls for at least a mile _._ Everything is spick and span, to such an extent that Stakar must have had rookies scout ahead of him with polish. No space-rust. No multi-layered dock (which is a fancy way of saying 'we don't have enough space to store all our M-ships horizontal-like, so we're gonna stack 'em vertically, suspended on individual straps, and pray the one on top don't fall'). 

Yondu sees plenty of engines and turbo-boosters that make his fingers itch. However, now he's back in Stakar's good graces – somewhat dubiously; nothing has been confirmed or denied, and Yondu is still waiting to find out what his rescue had cost in terms of fuel, dead men, and medical supplies – he knows better than to scupper that by stealing from him. If a one-time codebreaker is exiled, a two-time codebreaker only lives long enough to regret it.

Best steal from Quill instead.

He spies the  _Milano's_ lurid paintjob from the other side of the hangar. No sign of Greenie & co. He's in luck.

He's also, he thinks as he stalks towards it, setting his chin to a height that indicates he's supposed to be there, and managing to instil his stagger with swagger, making one of the biggest mistakes of his life.

Quill has two tapes now, right? But only one will fit in his Walkthing at any one time. That means the other is still on board, with Yondu's arrow. Kid will go loco without it. And how will the galaxy cope then, if their Guardians are leaderless? Who’s supposed to save all those civilizations from Celestial threats and maniacal Kree and everything between?

Yondu knows his arrow is in range. He can feel it chirruping at the base of his implant, a jittery yearning for flight. He tries to work out why he has yet to whistle it to him. First reason is obvious. He’s kinda outta practice, and his lips are still blistered from the sun, as if his body had diverted its energy to healing the larger wounds before starting on the small. The last thing he wants is to blow raspberries in front of Stakar's dockside crew - who have paused maintenance on their ships and dismissed their holographic welding shields, so they can gawp at the traitor in their midst.

Second reason takes more mental gymnastics. As soon as he summons the arrow, Yondu becomes Captain Udonta again. Always watching for threats, guard at a constant high, never without a weapon by his side.

This is where his internal flow-diagram of thoughts fails him though. Because shouldn’t Yondu  _want_ that security, after all he’s been through? 

He hasn't slung an arrow harness around his waist since he was stripped outside the barracks. It has been returned to him, along with his other leathers (coat not included. Quill seems to be waiting for him to ask for that, but so long as he's wearing it, it's a reason for Yondu to see him again.) There ain't no way to clip the belts to his hospital pants though, so Yondu ain’t bothered to pack them. He figures he'll have their tailor fasten him another harness once he’s back on the  _Eclector -_ after he’s commed Kraglin, to let him know it’s time to head home.

But despite all this, Yondu ain't been overcome by the need to retrieve his primary means of self-defence. He instead feels... safe. Sheltered. Content that Quill ain't gonna change his mind and sell him back to the Kree on a whim. While he reminds himself that cultivating hope is only going to end in disappointment, it's on reflex more than anything.

Quill ain't gonna hurt him. Kraglin ain't either.

And sure, Yondu could regret letting himself believe this. There’s something gnawing inside him –  Stakar calls it a hole; and while Yondu, being of a significantly less poetic mindset, prefers words like 'doubt' and 'suspicion', it sure feels hollow enough to warrant the metaphor. On the day Kraglin and Quill break his trust, that hole will spread, like cracks around freeze-thaw, until he shatters apart. 

But if he  _doesn't_ let himself trust again... Well.

Scars on the mind ain't like those on the body. There's no automatic recovery process. No platelets rushing to clot the wound; no collagen flowing to fill in what's been cut out. You wanna get better, you gotta grind away at it. You can’t just snarl and snap at everyone who dares broach the gap you’ve instated between yourself and those who want to help you. And you can’t run until that gap becomes a chasm either.

Yondu plods to a stop. The eyepatch is a tad tight. Martinex advises against wearing it for long periods until his eye-hole has completely scabbed over. But Martinex, despite his hoity-toity status as a galactically renowned scientist, ain't technically a doctor – or at least, not one of the medical sort. He can take his opinion and shove it between his crystalline buttocks. Yondu strokes the leather, feeling the give over the empty socket.

He remembers guiding Quill's hands – so much smaller than his own, back then – around the  _Milano's_ joystick. He remembers smacking those hands hard across the knuckles, and the little pink face as well, after Quill almost piloted them into the  _Eclector's_ thruster.

He was a pretty shitty dad, all things considered. But if Quill ain't given up on him yet, Yondu figures he shouldn't either.

  

 

 

 

* * *

  

Seven days later, and it's time to part ways. Stakar has told Yondu he's welcome to stay for as long as he likes, but Yondu has taken to staring wistfully out of porthole windows. Now he’s allowed to own things again, he longs for a ship that's  _his,_ rather than one with another man's name on the lease. Seeing him moon about like the waifish heroine of a Xandarian romance is disturbing for all of them. And so he and Kraglin are kitted out with a new M-ship, and the Guardians are due to blast away in their  _Milano,_ holiday officially over.

“Back to work, huh?” says Yondu.

While Yondu gets cheerier at the prospect of being released to the wild, Quill has steadily withdrawn into himself, becoming quieter and gloomier as this deadline closes. Right now, on the precipice of leaving,  their two crews stand on opposite sides of the divider that marks where a separate ship is to be docked, so it won't barge into it's neighbor's airspace on lift-off. 

Quill is a black hole. He sucks all happiness to wallow with him in a crushing, lightless quagmire. Yondu fakes enough to make up for his deficit. He claps his hands and grins, big and bright – brighter than ever in fact, as his metal teeth catch the glare from the M-ships' headlights.

“Liberatin' slaves, savin' whole damn planets... Son, yer the biggest disappoint a daddy could have.”

Drax gasps. Rocket rolls his beady black eyes.

“He's jokin'. Now c'mon, you two.” He nudges his leader's boot with a fuzzy elbow. Groot sprints along the limb to deliver a punch to the knee, which has Yondu chuckling, Gamora tutting, and Quill wincing. They're a soft bunch, alright - but the lil' one's got the makings of a fine Ravager. “Time to hug it out, so we can hurry to hyperspace. Next job's a fair trek from here – some chick held ransom by Kree deserters...” That whips Quill out of his funk – but only for as long as it takes to pin Rocket with a glare so sizzly it threatens to barbecue him. The rat grimaces, slapping a paw over his mouth. “Gotcha, Quill. Ix-nay on the Ree-kay.”

Ugh. Peter's trying to protect his  _feelings._ And he's roped his crew into helping. Last thing Yondu wants after that is a cuddle session. When Quill tries he's treated to a suckerpunch and a noogie, which swiftly devolves into a final fond ruffle of his hair.

“Bye, kid.”

“Bye, old man.”

“See ya ‘round.”

And that's that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **One more chappie to go, just to round things off! I can't believe we're here already. :O**


	24. In which we get our happy ending

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CW: A few very vague references to past non-con, and then happy, heartfelt kragdu sex at the end to make up for it. Plus Quill and Yondu fluff. All the fluff.**

It takes Yondu a week to regain control of the Ravagers. It would've been longer, but he has Stakar's flame at his back, and its warmth (and its promise of such luxuries as rust-proofed pipes, working boilers, and an engine that doesn't go  _bloop_ in the night for no discernible cause) lures scum towards him like mosquitoes to M-ship headlights in a swamp. The only git he has to threaten is Taserface – and that's not even because he speaks out; Yondu just doesn't like him.

The tailor tuts at his baggy underleathers and stitches him another coat. His old measurements are too big. The duster looks ridiculous, hanging off him like how leathers always draped off Quill before the boy started growing as if it was his sole purpose in life to smack his forehead on every doorway aboard the galleon. So he takes 'em to the scrap bucket, and has the tailor fit him from scratch. He even manages not to shudder when a tape-measure stretches up his inseam.

He's gotta work on rebuilding himself, like he's gotta work on rebuilding his standing, his rep, his place at the captain's table, whatever it was that had been brewing between him and Kraglin before that pesky lil’ enslavement shindig got in the way... And, most importantly of all, his relationship with Quill. 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

The ransomed 'chick' turns out to be a tentacular monstrosity of genderless origins, but the Guardians rescue her anyway. In the process, they come across a Kree who has some choice words to say about Quill's father.

“Your Captain. He belonged to the Girill, ages eight to fifteen. He was our family's serving slave. He poured our wine and ran our baths, and when he got big enough we sent him to fight for our honor in the Gladiatorial rings – until the Kirz clan offered us a price, and took him to war. Did you know that?”

Peter, panting heavily, clutches his depowered blaster pistol and nods. The Kree's smile is as slow and cruelly confident as his advance. He spins his hammer in menacing figures of eight, as if it weighs no more than a training bo. Peter's blasters look tiny in comparison, shiny and plastic as children’s toys.

But Yondu was the one to show him how to prime them. Yondu taught him how to lock the bolt in place so the plasma cartridge punctured, and how to open it again without getting a squirt of sizzling superheated liquid in the face. He held his arms out stiff; aimed his barrel for him, braced him against the kickback and breathed  _fire_ into his nine-year-old ear...

“Would you like to know,” says the Kree, stopping a meter away and sneering down at Peter from on high, “What my uncle did to his pretty little serving boys when they misbehaved?”

If it'll keep him talking long enough for his battery to recharge. Peter nods.

The Kree tells him.

  

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 Peter throws the sawn-off head at Yondu's feet. “There,” he says gruffly. “Present.”

Yondu's wearing the patch. He scratches at it now, lone remaining eye flicking down and back up again without a hint of recognition.

“This gonna be a regular thing, Quill? How's about next time you steal me somethin' of actual value, huh? There's some Flengoffan diamonds I got my eyes – or  _eye_ – on...”

“One, that's terrible joke and I hate you. Two, I don't work for you anymore.”

“One, you're an awful brat who sells yer own damn daddy into slavery -”

“One, I didn't get a say in that; two, you went of your own accord; three, I fucking  _knew_ you'd never let that go -”

“-And two, if ya don't work for me, you ain't got no business bringing me dead Kree!”

Kraglin raises his hand. “Uh, sir? I've lost count.”

Yondu ignores him. He gives the head a boot, sending it skittering along the floor towards Half-nut, who immediately picks it up and tries to juggle it. Taserface, jaw still broken from the last time he questioned Yondu's authority – going so far as to ask whether their faction could still be respected if they followed a known Kree slave – snatches it from him and punts it back to Yondu with a scowl.

Things have been peaceful, since he returned. Despite the many, many ignominies he suffered at the hands of the Kree, the threat of mutiny has been dampened by Yondu's return to grace – and the splash of new income. Avenues previously closed to them thanks to the black mark Stakar placed over their names, are damn near busting open with confetti and streamers. Seems Stakar has put the word out: Yondu's back, and he's here to stay.

If money makes the world go around, it makes the galaxy spin a lil' slicker too. They can finally afford a fully-functional sewage system! In a way, Yondu misses the creaks and groans of stoppered pipes, which had been the accompanying melody to some of his finest heist plots. Not to mention the threat of a stinky disciplinary punishment, which he could hang over the heads of misbehaving rookies (and did, with gusto, especially one noisy Terran brat named Peter Quill). But the Eclector's swanky upmarket plasma canons, which would make a Nova officer swoon, sway his opinion on the matter.

He's got everything he could possibly want. Jobs in the bag, and more on the horizon. A ship. A crew. A loyal mate (almost to the point of annoyance. Kraglin has barely left his side long enough for him to put that new biological waste-recycling system to good use. Yondu probably oughta talk to him about that, but figures it's easiest to take on all the most dangerous gigs and let Kraglin watch him butcher people left right and center until it sinks through his skull that his cap'n ain't incapable of looking after himself.)

In fact, the only smear on this canvas of victories is shaped like Peter Quill.

Yondu sighs. He stands, pulling a face as his knees creak. His body ain't forgiven him for the cage or the crawling yet, and a tiny part of him's afraid it never will. Can't just laze about and get fat though. He's promised himself he ain't gonna let his waistline slip until Stakar's does, and then another decade on top for good measure.

For now, he hops off the step that elevates his throne quarter of a meter above the rest of the bridge like the spry young thing he is – so with a grumble and a flex of stiff hip joints. He stalks over to Quill, intending to grab him by the hair and shake him like he used to.

Quill evades. Just. “Hey! What's that for?”

“ _That_  is for him.” Yondu thumbs over his shoulder. “This is what – third time this month? One of these days, yer gonna pick a fight with someone when yer boyband's too far away to save ya -”

“Boy and girl,” Greenie reminds him. Yondu concedes the point.

“-And on that day, it'll be your head thas brought to me on a platter. Not that of some idiot Kree who's runnin' his mouth cause he knows it'll piss ya off. You got it? Ain't no point getting yerself dead over this.”

Well. Not dead. There's that whole Celestial business, looming like the roiling lashes of radiation that foretell a solar storm. Stakar has dragged him aside and made... enquiries, and has accepted Yondu's request that he don't mention a word of it to Quill. So far. How long the boy's ignorance will last, should Ego hear rumors about Infinity Stones and Terran handlers, Yondu doesn't like to consider – although it sometimes keeps him up at night. While the bearded nuzzle and the spindly chest that snuggles up to his back on those occasions are nice, they do shit-all to reassure him.

Quill channels his father's temperament. ( _His other father,_  Yondu's brain supplies. It gets huffy about it too, until he schools his original thought to match.) He holds his ground, chin thrust forwards to show off his pout.

“He deserved it. Things he was saying... About you, cap-Yondu.”

Yondu props a hand on his aching hip. He massages his eyepatch, over where tension likes to build, and sighs. “Them's just words, Quill. How many times.”

“Always once more,” Quill says, far too cheerfully. He goes to hug him, Yondu fends him off, Kraglin glares at any of the Ravagers who mutter about softness so Yondu doesn't have to. And things ain't perfect, but there's a new head for the growing collection on the wall of his cabin (they're too big for his dashboard; and Kraglin says that the reek of formaldehyde ain't conducive to bedroom atmosphere, but would he rather Yondu left them to rot?). 

Plus, Quill's guaranteed to swing back in a month or so with another. So it's not perfect, but it's a fair sight better than Yondu deserves.

Try as he might to deny it, a part of him will always be waiting for the other boot to drop. For Quill to realize that he ain't worth all this effort, for Kraglin to scoff at the memory of the broken thing they pried off the rock at the Kree barracks and leave him a stronger cap'n, and for Stakar to wake up one morning and decide on a whim that he doesn't forgive Yondu after all.

Yondu is doing his best to dim that suspicion. Every night-cycle he spends with Kraglin and every day-cycle with Quill makes it a fraction less blinding. He hoards good memories like he does trinkets, and banishes the doubt to the back of his mind, where it lurks beneath the flow-diagram boxes that corral his conscious thoughts. 

He leaves his ship for shoreleave, and rather than spending it with bot-hookers, he books rooms in fancy hotels who ain't too fussed about little things like  _intergalactic multi-million-unit bounties_. He spends those days spilled over a bed so that his first mate can move inside him, and Yondu can tangle their fingers together, then wrench them apart and thread his through Kraglin's hair instead, and rock and gasp and scrape nails down Kraglin's back, and feel  _connected_ rather than empty.

Sometimes he drops in on Stakar and his old crew. These visits are always unannounced and always without warning. He's sure he'd lose his nerve if he knew they were expecting him.

Mainframe is as bubbly as ever, and Aleta as saucy, and Charlie as big. But while they're all the same, they've all changed too. There's so many stories he's missed out on, so many in-jokes that he sniggers along to but ponders in the privacy of his mind.

Yondu wonders whether they'll ever be what they once were. But it's an improvement, and he's glad for it.

And sometimes, he buzzes a message to Quill's comm, and gets an affirmative in reply.

Those holidays are the best ones. Yondu plays catch with Quill and his gang of idiots on deserted tropical beach planets – a game the boy never seems to tire of, although Yondu needs to call break every half hour and go collapse in the shade. They stroll around Xandar and lap up the citizens’ adoration of their saviors. They work the occasional job side by side - always something good, something kind, something that reminds Yondu that, while he's far from a hero himself, his son is the one this galaxy deserves.

He feels the gap inside him shrink every time Peter smiles.

It doesn't recede completely. Call it cowardice, pragmatism, or whatever the hell you want. Yondu's hole remains – although the sediment inside it has been smoothed over and patted flat and layered up again, time after time, so that it's more of a dimple, nowadays.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Guys, it's been a blast. Thanks to every single commenter. Thank you for the kind words, for your anticipation for every chapter, for the pondering and the philosophizing, for the keyboard smashes, and for the eye puns (not really (yes really; they made me ugly-laugh)). Next fic to be uploaded will be a sequel to _Stay The Night,_ so stay tuned for that!**

**Author's Note:**

> **Short chapters, but a long fic. Tell me your thoughts?**


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